A Masstige Not For Me: Reflections On Jimmy Choo for H&M

Tomorrow, with the release of their Jimmy Choo collaboration, H&M can cut another notch into their masstige bedpost. Personally, I think this is the second-to-worst collab from H&M, with Madonna's tracksuits more than earning the bottom rung. For the first time in several seasons, you won't find me outside an H&M tomorrow as I think each and every piece is far too clubby/LA and far overpriced for being a hair above Zara.

But these beliefs didn't stop me from doing my job of checking out the products at the H&M 5th Ave as they sat, guarded, in the window. After some "ha"-ing to myself over what hype they've managed to generate from such not-that-great stuff, I walked up a block before turning around to head south to my subway stop. It was when I walked by the H&M this second time that a cute little scene played out in my path, and now sticks in my head.

Scene: (Fifth Avenue sidewalk, rush hour at dusk)

I am dressed in all black and walking south at a fair clip, navigating the tourists on Fifth Ave when I approach a clearing at the entrance of H&M. I hear a man calling out "Bunny! Bunny!" and the odd name causes me to glance to the source of the voice. It is an older, well-fed man in a tailored black suit, with whisps of grey hair that calls to mind Bernie Madoff. He is holding open the rear passenger door to a black towncar, parked at the curb directly outside of H&M's doors.

Standing on the sidewalk, frozen squarely between the towncar and H&M's doors is a an older woman with excellent posture, poised to take another step towards H&M. She has silver hair, pulled back into a tight and perfect ponytail, and she's dressed in a well-tailored black skirt suit, with a little swing to the skirt. It suits her excellently and she just oozes money. I look from her back to the man at the town car, and then back to the woman. In this second, her indecision is palpable; whether to ask the husband to wait a moment while she inquires about the Jimmy Choo in the window, or to retreat and go home.

The woman does exactly what I expected and hoped of her. She briskly turns on her heel and climbs into the towncar, essentially wiping away her curiosity of the Choo and H&M connection. That is all, and that is how I too feel about this--meh.

Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2010 [Was] Upon Us

...and it's travel-themed! I have to admit that my heart fluttered a bit at this fact; are they appealing directly to my sensibilities? Thank you IMG Fashion for this theme; my eyes will be drinking it in all week.

[Update: Fashion Week is over; the full list of my attendance is below. But won't you read alll the lovely stories and liveblogs over at Racked under Fashion Week Spring 2010.

Speaking of this week, I'm going to use this post to keep tabs on my show attendance. Won't you follow along? I'm covering Fashion Week for Racked.com, as I've done for the past several seasons as well, considering as how I've been writing for Racked for almost two years, a length of time surprising in the blogosphere. If you'd like to see the stories, liveblogs, and tweets that accompany these shows, you can find them there and @racked and @jetsetcd on Twitter.

Now the list of what I've attended and covered:

- Jenni Kayne (presentation)

- Target/Anna Sui Pop-Up (Party)

- Ports 1961 (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Yigal Azrouel (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Cynthia Rowley (Runway, Gallery)

- Nicole Miller (Runway, Gallery)

- Cynthia Rowley After-Party

- Charlotte Ronson After-Party

- Rag & Bone After-Party

- Christian Siriano (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Band of Outsiders (presentation)

- Y-3 (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Custo Barcelona (Runway, Gallery)

- Carlos Miele (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Jill Stuart (Runway, Gallery)

- Thakoon (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Badgley Mischka (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Willow (Runway, Gallery)

- Alexandre Hercovitch (Runway, Liveblog, Gallery)

- Anna Sui (Runway, Gallery)

- Norma Kamali (Runway, Gallery)

- threeASFOUR/Yoko Ono (Runway, Gallery)

And other shows I've been involved with covering:

- BCBGMaxAzria

- Charlotte Ronson

- Brian Reyes

- Max Azria

- Nanette Lepore

- 3.1 Phillip Lim

And the list of observations:

- You might be in the middle of Manhattan, but nowhere seems to have any good 3G or even cell reception. As a result, I have said "fuck" far too much and too loudly today.

- Apparently if you want an endless stream of catcalls, just wear heels.

- Model's thighs do touch; I watched it happen when the screens showed the Rosa Cha show

- Older men who get to enter the Fashion Week tent because they are sponsors or something, are most likely there to prey on the Asian trendspotters who speak little English. It's gross to watch.

- Free stuff is a burden. Actually I learned that last season.

- Fashion parties are not too different from regular private lounge parties, except that the guests are usually wearing a higher percentage of black clothing with more zippers and leather.

- The tents are often more full of aspiring stylists and hangers-on than they are with actual clients, press, and established fashion people.

- One of the reasons I always look forward to the Y-3 show is because it's a breath of fresh air. The characters of the tents aren't there, the venue always has plenty of space and organization, and they use a really wide selection of models, of all ethnicities.

- There are people that work in fashion who do not know how to pronounce designer names like "Max Azria," "Herve Leger," and "Anna Sui."

- I think I might be the only person (aside from the rest of Team Racked and already established fashion folk) are aren't trying to foist a portfolio or business card into the hands of people who look influential.

- I'm definitely one of the "I'd rather be heard and not seen"-type of bloggers. That does not mean I'm ugly. This could be a whole other post entirely.

Steak Dinners And 'Famous' Rooms: NYC Of The 1950s

Update: I did the series, and as promised had fun with it. I don't think the Jaunted half went near as well as the HotelChatter half, since I've continued on with HC posts on the topic even after the week of stories. You can check out the series here:

VINTAGE NYC HOTELS --HotelChatter

NYC IN THE 1950s -- Jaunted

Just a sneaky peek inside of this amazing NY Tourist brochure from 1953 which my uncle sent to me for my birthday just passed. (Click the picture to see in detail). It makes me thirst for Canada Dry ginger ale more than I normally do.

With this brochure, and its very chic little ads inside for everything from lobster and steak dinners to dancing in the Rainbow Room, I'm working on a series of stories on Retro NY tourism for Jaunted and HotelChatter. It'll be great, it'll be be visually interesting, and it'll hopefully be inspiring, Mad Men-fever and all. Stay tuned for a huge reveal of this booklet of vintage fun...

Canal Street Counterfeiters: The Bane of My NYC Life

Just over a year ago, I snapped the above picture of a policeman in the doorway of a Canal Street perfume shop being raided for selling counterfeit goods. My resulting story of watching the raid is here, and since even before then I have been resistant to walking through this area.

Some days however, I find myself having to confront Canal and the unrelenting black market bagmongers who crowd the corners and stealthily say to you "miss bags louieweetongucciprada louieweetonguccipradachannel?"

Since I'm typically the girl who charges down the sidewalk, face stonily set with a "don't fuck with me" directness, any obstacle in my path makes me extremely annoyed. I can forgive strollers and confused tourists, but not these bag men.

Today, for the first time, I talked back to one of them. As I attempted to make a right turn on the sidewalk, he blocked me to release his stream of "louiewuittonchannelpradagucci" and I loudly replied with a deep and pained "Nooooooo." A second after, leaving him in my dust, I realized how powerfully cathartic this exclamation had been.

Generally the rule in dealing with these counterfeit street salesmen is to be silent and continue walking, or reply with a simple "no." But today's heat, and the sidewalk crowding of Canal that always forces me to walk in the street, with traffic, kicked me to a new level of annoyance. Not to mention that I am also offended that the salesmen would look at me and think that I would be interested in their wares. Like I've said before, I've seen fakes in the slums of Shanghai and I've seen the same conditions behind the scenes in New York, and this whole business is deadly.

If all of a sudden my face appears on a milk carton or on a missing persons flyer, you should start by questioning any number of the gangs that operate the counterfeiting business in Chinatown. I plan to continue talking back.

Want v. Need: July Edition

Starting now, I am going to do a monthly round-up of five random items that I come across online, which deserve a small spotlight as life-improving things or events. Nonetheless, can't have everything, so I've got to make decisions...

• Want: To see the "Kodachrome Culture: The American Tourist In Europe" exhibit at the National Geographic Museum in DC.
• Want: Nice furniture inspired by graffiti, like this dripdrop sideboard that takes Krink's work and adapts it to somehow be both minimalist and contemporary--not to its expensive appearance.
• Need: The patience and attention to detail that made it possible to turn an Italian beach into a sand castle ode to Dante's Inferno.
• Need: A compact camera that is waterproof, drop-proof, temperature change-proof, and sand-proof, and yet takes HD video and 12.1 megapixel pics with face detection and shake reduction. Lord knows I take a load of pics everyday for the blogs, in all conditions (almost ruined my old cam with Saharan sand, even, but then it succumbed to the surf in St. Maarten) and I am the perfect person to put this Pentax to work.
• Want: If I had a backyard (or any yard), a eco-pod would be an ideal home blogging office, not to mention a hammock oasis during inclement weather. But at £17,630 plus VAT, people might as well just buy a small second house in a bad neighborhood.

Me: Now Available In Print

Well, I'm now available in print, but only if you rode London's Tube system on the 23. June and picked up a copy of one of the city's free rags: thelondonpaper.

Thanks to some great connections through blogs, I was able to write up one of my favorite additions to the New York scene: The High Line. My article joins coverage of the newly-opened Hermitage Museum in Amsterdam and the Acropolis Museum in Athens to form the paper's weekly section on travel. Read it below! Ok, I'm kidding, you can read it here and see pictures, video and more coverage of my High Line adventures here.
P.S. - London seems to like me. Earlier this year I was chosen as the winner of a photography competition sponsored by Flickr and The Design Museum. The interview that resulted can be found here.

[Photos via edscoble and more ILoveQ8]

Happy Branding or: How I Would Drink This Milk Despite Lactose Intolerancy

What's the deal, Target brand Archer Farms? No new redesign love for soy milk? I see how it is.

Like any good girl living in a city during the age of Apple, Method and Design Within Reach, I've developed a soft spot for product design with a particular sensitivity to branding. Brand New, Lovely Package, and YourLogoMakesMeBarf are on my RSS and Muji accessories dot my desk, so I don't take it lightly to proclaim that Archer Farms' new packaging blows me away.

So what if it resembles the Bahamas logo? I want to lick the cereal boxes below something fierce. These changes, a turn to the simplistic, hearken back to the days of being a kid and playing "kitchen" with mini wood rolling pins and dented kid-sized muffin tins with a few heartwarming rusty spots.

It's like your mom's old cookbooks from the 1960s and 70s, filled with recipes for lemon squares and swedish meatballs and sporting some primary colors atop slowly yellowing pages. Not to mention the pastoral hints; one can imagine these items plopped onto a circular wood kitchen table in some picture-perfect country house during breakfast. They evoke visions of wheat fields and Scandinavian sunrises.

Since I live NYC, and wheat fields (let alone sunrises) are hard to come by, I kind of want to spend all my money on these packages just to have them lining my countertop and cheering me up with their visual appeal. Especially the turtle macaroni & cheese; that turtle is so mine.
Images and more at: Lovely Package

How To Fly For Less Than The Cost Of A Flight

I've been a naughty blogger. I went to Berlin. I had a great time, stayed slightly within my means, and left this blog hanging while I funneled the content into Jaunted.

If you'd like to see what went exactly went down overseas, some of it is here, but now I'd like to tie up the loose ends of my last post by dissecting exactly how I managed to go to Berlin without bankrupting myself. It became a three-step process, one that I highly recommend

for those who can do it. Shall we begin?

1. Flexibility. Since my employment is somewhat fluid, I was able to utilize that magical travel booking engine feature of searching +/- 3 days. After posting my last, emotional entry on trouble with such sites, the heavens opened and I stumbled across my dream $381 roundtrip direct (including taxes and fees) on Delta from JFK to TXL.
   I booked the shit out of that, even though they barely had a seat for me on the plane and it was, in the simplest way I can put it, a shit flight.
2. Humility. Look, in the immortal words of Sheryl Crow: "This ain't no disco; this ain't no country club either." This is a last-minute trip on less than a shoestring budget. I booked this baby 4 days prior to departure, and whipped out a Priceline voucher code for $50 off a name-your-own-price hotel stay, a deal I magically got on Twitter.
   
   Since I was due to meet up with my guy-friend for the last 3 nights of my stay, I opted to name my own price for a 5-star hotel in the Tiergarten district, which returned with the Marriott Berlin. That added another $150 onto my trip total. The humility enters the picture for the first two nights, when I bit the bullet and shacked up at Jetpak Hostel, which boasted of Free WiFi and rented me a bike for a whole day for 5 Euro.
   
   It was on this bike and at Jetpak that I was able to quickly get a feel for the city, while befriending the amazing Miriam, one of the hostel staff who has now also taken up travel blogging on an Italian site. The hostel was about another $35, but factor in a few more dollars for all the 1 Euro cappuccinos I consumed while happily working the mornings away in their cafe.
3. Localizing: Sure I wanted to shop, and have a nice meal at a fancy al fresco restaurant, and take a side trip, but that's because those are the urges one has when exploring a new destination. You wouldn't be doing those things if you actually lived in Berlin, and so I thought--what would I be doing tonight if I lived here?
   
   Eating 3 Euro currywurst from a corner Imbiß and chasing it with 75 Eurocent beers in bed while watching Bernd, das Brot. Or taking a free stroll through the Tiergarten to the Siegessäule. Or recycling--an action made so much cooler when a barcode-reading, bottle-eating machine is involved.
   
   At the end of the trip, I realized that I had only shopped for one thing: a 3 Euro magazine on modern European Architecture from Pro QM.

All in, I'm looking back at a 5-night/6-day trip to Berlin that cost about $600 total. Damn, I'm cheap (and good). Considering that flights for the same route--when searching around the web--were averaging $800, I think this trip was a flippin success. Not to mention how cozy it was that my tax refund arrived prior to this. I won't be getting one of those next year, so I better travel the heck out of this year; am I right?

Cynthia, travel dork: 2* Economic downturn and lack of sustainable income: 0

(2 because I traveled to Hong Kong in February using these 3 steps)