4.30.2010
4.28.2010
More Guide to Menhattan GOODNESS
You're Tacky and I Hate You
By Rachel Upshaw, New York, NY
That would be my first instinctual comment on the website Go Try It On, where you upload outfit photos and strangers tell you whether to wear it or change it. Jaykay. But it is one of my fave Mean Girl quotes. Digressing, per usual.This site combines a bunch of things I love:
a) Clothes and styling
b) Judging others (it's like Hot or Not for outfits!)
c) Technology being used for cool shiz
It's sort of like the suped-up version of in Clueless when Cher took pictures of her outfits to decide what to wear. Remember that? Of course you do. Because we were young and impressionable and thought she was so lucky. Well, now that could be any of us (with the time, patience and effort necessary to solicit feedback) thanks to good ol' technology.
Also, speaking of technological advances, remember in older movies when people always assumed we'd be living on the moon or at least in outerspace at this point in time?
Fail.
Sorry, just thinking outloud...and being disappointed.
Anyway, since I live with The BFF who proactively offers her feedback and suggestions about my outfits (she might not always say it nicely, but she usually has good ideas), I don't know if I'll throw my wardrobe out for the masses to judge.
But if you try it, leave a comment here about your experience! Like with most things in life, I'm intrigued but lazy.
4.22.2010
Intoxicated Coachella Attendee Struggles to Put on Flip-flop. Flip-flops are pretty tricky, though. So flippy, so floppy.
I mean, we've all been there, just hopefully won't be there when we are this guy's age?
Eek.
NYT View of Earth Day- Worth a Quick Read
At 40, Earth Day Is Now Big Business
By LESLIE KAUFMAN
So strong was the antibusiness sentiment for the first Earth Day in 1970 that organizers took no money from corporations and held teach-ins “to challenge corporate and government leaders.”
Forty years later, the day has turned into a premier marketing platform for selling a variety of goods and services, like office products, Greek yogurt and eco-dentistry.
For this year’s celebration, Bahama Umbrella is advertising a specially designed umbrella, with a drain so that water “can be stored, reused and recycled.” Gray Line, a New York City sightseeing company, will keep running its buses on fossil fuels, but it is promoting an “Earth Week” package of day trips to green spots like the botanical gardens and flower shopping at Chelsea Market.
F. A. O. Schwarz is taking advantage of Earth Day to showcase Peat the Penguin, an emerald-tinted plush toy that, as part of the Greenzys line, is made of soy fibers and teaches green lessons to children. The penguin, Greenzys promotional material notes, “is an ardent supporter of recycling, reusing and reducing waste.”
To many pioneers of the environmental movement, eco-consumerism, creeping for decades, is intensely frustrating and detracts from Earth Day’s original purpose.
“This ridiculous perverted marketing has cheapened the concept of what is really green,” said Denis Hayes, who was national coordinator of the first Earth Day and is returning to organize this year’s activities in Washington. “It is tragic.”
Yet the eagerness of corporations to sign up for Earth Day also reflects the environmental movement’s increased tolerance toward corporate America: Many “big greens,” as leading environmental advocacy organizations are known, now accept that they must take money from corporations or at the least become partners with them if they are to make real inroads in changing social behavior.
This year, in an updated version of a teach-in, Greenpeace will team up with technology giants like Cisco and Google to hold a Web seminar focused on how the use of new technologies like videoconferencing and “cloud” computing can reduce the nation’s carbon footprint. Daniel Kessler, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said it was necessary to “promote a counterweight to the fossil fuel industry.”
In 1970, Mayor John V. Lindsay of New York addressed a crowd of tens of thousands in Union Square on Earth Day, in an atmosphere The New York Times likened to a “secular revival meeting.”
This year, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will be in Times Square to announce measures to reduce New York’s impact on the environment. Using the same stage, Keep America Beautiful, an antilittering nonprofit organization, will introduce “dream machines,” recycling kiosks it is introducing with PepsiCo. The machines are meant to increase the recycling rates for beverage containers, which is estimated at about 36 percent nationwide.
Of course, a fair portion of the more than 200 billion beverage containers produced in the United States each year are filled with PepsiCo products like Mountain Dew and Aquafina; such bottle trash contributes to serious pollution on beaches, oceans and inland waterways.
Still, Matthew M. McKenna, president and chief executive of Keep America Beautiful, and a former PepsiCo senior vice president, said he jumped at the opportunity to have his former employer introduce its new kiosk at the event.
“We are not being asked to encourage the purchase of Pepsi or the consumption of their products,” he said. “We are asked to deal in the field with what happens when they get thrown out.”
While the momentum for the first Earth Day came from the grass roots, many corporations say that it is often the business community that now leads the way in environmental innovation — and they want to get their customers interested. In an era when the population is more divided on the importance of environmental issues than it was four decades ago, the April event offers a rare window, they say, when customers are game to learn about the environmentally friendly changes the companies have made.
Frank Sherman, United States green officer for TD Bank, said the company hurried to get its prototype of a highly energy-efficient bank branch building in Queens ready for Earth Day because that’s when “people are paying attention.”
The original Earth Day events were attended by 20 million Americans — to this day among the largest participation in a political action in the nation’s history.
This year, while the day will be widely marked with events, including a climate rally on the Mall in Washington, the movement does not have the same support it had four decades ago.
In part, said Robert Stone, a independent documentary filmmaker whose history of the American environmental movement is being broadcast on public television this week, the movement has been a victim of its own success in clearing up tangible problems with air and water. But that is just part of the problem, he noted.
“Every Earth Day is a reflection of where we are as a culture,” he said. “If it has become commoditized, about green consumerism instead of systemic change, then it is a reflection of our society.”
4.19.2010
Do You Know This Guy?
At the recent Yeasayer concert in Austin my boyfriend took this picture on his phone to send to me because they were making fun of this guy who was apparently having a very, very bad time.
[quoting him and his friend - use a whiny voice]
"Oh, my girlfriend just broke up with me, wahhh."
[my boyfriend]
"Somebody call the wambulance."
Upon receiving the picture I passed it around to my friends in a kinda wtf moment until someone said, "Wow. That's a cool picture." Only then did I realize that it was much more than just a snap of the 'ol iPhone-making fun of someone-moment. It was artistically pretty rad in composition, lighting and color.
4.15.2010
Zac Posen Video on His Line for Target
4.12.2010
4.09.2010
New SATC trailor ready to be watched... YA!
Can't wait until May 27th, 2010. See you at the theater!
4.08.2010
So Pumped: Zac Posen for Target Set to Debut 4/25
Lovers of affordable fashion REJOICE!
I swear it's no coincidence that Zac Posen's line for Target is set to debut the day after my birthday. It's like a little gift from him to me and all I can say is, "Thank you Zac dear, I love you."
With most items under $100 and with garments like Target's first full length gown expect these items to sell out fast. For more insight into his genius here's a part of Zac's interview with Teen Vogue:
"Individuality" has always been a Posen mantra, and his fans will be happy to know the designer held tight to his core values. His Target line even boasts a tuxedo for women, a nod not only to vintage Saint Laurent but also to current events. "Lesbian proms have been such a big thing in the news lately," Posen says. "Rather than create a fake subculture, I wanted to address things that are actually happening." Not that you need to be gay to wear the tux; it just takes confidence, the designer explains. "It's a kick-ass girl who can wear a tuxedo to prom! Don't be afraid of drama," he adds. "Prom is one of the few opportunities in life when you can fulfill any romantic desires you have. And," he deadpans, with signature Posen wit, "there's no prenup attached to it." Nor would you need one at these prices.
Ok, I may be wayyy past my prom years, but I will probably buy that tuxedo and that gown because I just love them. Well, at least think about buying them- gotta do my part for the eonomy. It's almost as good as when Proenza Schouler did a line for Target and I broke the bank with those purchases. Alas, the days of college when I was not the sole breadwinner in my life...
Here's the complete lookbook from ze line expected to debut Sunday, April 25 at Targets nationwide:
Daily Inspiration
Would dew believe it: The stunning pictures of sleeping insects covered in water droplets
These remarkable photographs were taken by physiotherapist Miroslaw Swietek at around 3am in the forest next to his home.
Using a torch, the 37-year-old amateur photographer hunts out the motionless bugs in the darkness before setting up his camera and flash just millimetres from them.
See more of these haunting photos here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1260946/The-stunning-pictures-sleeping-insects-covered-early-morning-dew.html#ixzz0kWaOUQuB
4.06.2010
My Latest Purse Obsessions
My older sister has an obsession, although she prefers to call it a collection, with Fendi Baguettes. Fortunately for her there are many, many different versions and so she'll never own all of them and will always have something to look for. Because every woman ever is always looking for the perfect something. It's always about the chase with us. That is why I love thrift store shopping because there are some really tremendous finds, but you just have to look...
I've spent an abnormally large portion of my short life focusing on purses that you can invest in. This is simply because I do not want to end up on Hoarders.
Therefore, only the best will do. They have to be classic with an edge. And must last.
Enough of my blabbering let's get to the good stuff- my two covetable, earthly obsessions {remember folks, you can't take 'em with you}:
Rocco Mini studded leather bag, $875
Edie studded leather handbag, $700
*Good news for those of you that missed this lovely item last year- it's being re-released so we can all snatch it up*
4.05.2010
Guide to Menhattan's Every Girl Ever Hilarity
Every Girl Ever is So Fat!
by Rachel Upshaw, New York, NY, http://www.guidetomenhattan.com/
Did you know that it's March Madness? Wait, college basketball? Brackets? What are you talking about?
I'm talking about when it's the end of March and it dawns on you that - OMG - Memorial Day is, like, right around the corner! Then the "People Will See This Body Half-Naked" Dread sinks in because, like Every girl ever, I just realized that I'm so fat! Like Every girl ever, I was riding high on fumes from looking good last summer. Then things went down hill when, like Every girl ever, I didn't think that diets had any business in my holiday celebration considerations. A plate of Christmas cookies all for me? Don't mind if I do!
Then, like Every girl ever, I pretended to care about this turn of events when New Year's rolled around because, like Every girl ever knows, you have to at least say your resolution is to lose weight. Like Every girl ever, though, I knew this was shit.
I put off dealing with this problem by covering up myself with the necessary 75 articles of clothing. Plus, at least the upside to wearing tights every day is having them suck you in like linked sausage? Hmm, sausage? Am I hungry?
Anyway, after a few months of hibernation, I started to realize there was a problem when I couldn't fit into that ambitious pair of jeans I bought last summer. You know, the ones that make my ass look good! Like every girl ever, at first I blamed it on the fact that they had just been washed. Like Every girl ever, I was in denial, the first stage of grief. Grief for my non-fatass former self.
Like Every girl ever, I'm going to show this fatass who is boss! Like Every girl ever this will involve more talk than action, but girls love talking, so it's fine, because talking burns calories! So does sleeping. Sleeping in on Saturday mornings instead of going to Pilates is totally what every girl ever would do, so that's fine too!
No, but seriously, this time I really mean it! I'm super committed! Along with Every girl ever, I have started going to every class at the gym. Wow, some are really hard! Every girl ever, though, is panting and sweating just like me. Every girl ever does not look good working out. Except some girls do manage to look pretty, but they probably suck and have no friends.
Anyway, I've been working out really hard and eating salads every day for lunch. I'm certain the pounds are just shedding off. Then, like Every girl ever, I step on the scale to congratulate myself on my progress. "WHAT?? I GAINED a pound this weekend!?!" Like Every girl ever, I didn't really factor in that drinking 24 mimosas might be a little excessive in the caloric intake department.
Ugh, like Every girl ever, I feel like life is so hard sometimes! Sometimes I day dream about getting preventative gastric bypass surgery, maybe from Dr. Robert Ray!? Like Every girl ever, I loved Dr. 90210 even though his straight gayishness was very confusing! All those bright colors. Just like Chuck Bass, but Brazilian and into martial arts!
Then I remind myself that the best idea is for me just to stick to my hardwork and be patient...Wait, do I smell sausage?
I guess we could go watch basketball and drink a bucket of beer. There's always time to be dedicated when there's nothing good to watch on TV.
xoxo
Every Girl Ever
Online Shopping Away the Recession Blues at Goodwill. Why not?
We have found yet another reason to celebrate in these massively unfortunate economic times: We learned from a post on ASSME that Goodwill, yea, seriously, Goodwill!, is simply spilling over with designer duds for nothing. OK, so maybe they were making fun of the New York Times for their condescending reporting on this “trend”, but we decided that we need to check it out for ourselves anyway. Read on past the jump to see what we uncovered in this bargain paradise.
Not only can you go to your local Goodwill and check out their goods, but you can also shop their “collections” online! Every item is pictured, and if it’s designer, there’s a picture of the label too, à la eBay. We couldn’t believe some of the things on there were going for such low prices. Christian Dior, Burberry, vintage furs… there were some real finds, and most for under $20. (There were also a significant number of Vera Bradley bags. Sorority girl guilt, perhaps?) I love a deal!!!
We’ve pulled out a few of our favorites below.
Vera Wang Sleeveless Metallic Dress Size 10, $13.99
Brown Dark Eyed Mink Stole, $5
L. Bamberger & Co. Fur Coat, $6
Group of Five Christian Dior Men’s Print Neckties, $5
Pink Salamander Lilly Pulitzer Dress Size 6P, $14
Christian Dior, Amrose, & Betty Jean’s Mink Hats, $26
Black Chanel Boots, $51
Brown Dark Eyed Mink Stole, $5
L. Bamberger & Co. Fur Coat, $6
Group of Five Christian Dior Men’s Print Neckties, $5
Pink Salamander Lilly Pulitzer Dress Size 6P, $14
Christian Dior, Amrose, & Betty Jean’s Mink Hats, $26
Black Chanel Boots, $51
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)