one night out in new york city from katja hentschel on Vimeo.

Tony, Hair Stylist

Sweater, pants & shoes all Fifth Avenue Shoe Repair and Fruit of the Loom T-shirt.

Wearing:
Shirt from H&M
Jeans from American Apparel
Shoes from New Balance

The way he speaks and what he says is just too good. I love you Alber! I really look forward to see the collection, and even if it’s luxury for H&M I hope the prices wont be too high. Do you remember I met Alber at the CFDA/Vogue fashion fund dinner? If not here’s a link, and another link.

My Balenciaga fangirldom is by now common knowledge around these parts, and despite Megs’ ongoing inability to find her perfect Balenciaga bag, I just keep discovering things from the brand that I need in my closet with a fierce urgency. Funny how that works, eh?

The latest object of my lust is the Balenciaga Giant City with rose gold hardware, and although I’m late to the rose gold party, I hope that I still get bonus points for earnestness. I brushed off the rose gold color choice as too “niche” when I heard about it, but after encountering this very bag in person, I can ignore it no longer.

At first I assumed that rose gold hardware would clash with most of my jewelry and my general sense of style, since I mostly associate the metal with expensive, gaudy jewelry that is very much not my style. In typical Balenciaga fashion, though, the designers behind the hardware gave it a weathered, gritty appearance that transforms it into something that fits right into my wardrobe.

Only the front zipper has a bit of shine to it, and the contrast is an interesting before-and-after demonstration of what the studs and buckles used to look like. It might prove more difficult to match rose gold hardware with Balenciaga’s famous bright leathers, but the rose and black combination works just fine for me. Buy through Matches for $1551.

Love her Ann Demeulemeester boots! And isn’t he the perfect arm candy with his wrinkely linen jacket?

Except for maybe horsehair. It’s been used for centuries to make bows for string instruments, but Akris appears to have cornered the modern market on luxury horsehair purses with their line of Akris Ai Tote Bags. As far as I’ve been able to find, other brands have used horsehair to accent their designs, but this is the first bag in a while to use the material as the main attraction. The upside is that using the material doesn’t harm the animals in any way; the downside, unfortunately, is that the medium version costs a whopping $4400.

Horsehair is an interesting material for sure. I played classical strings for the better part of a decade, so I know how even and uniform it can look when treated and pulled tight, and it’s more or less endlessly renewable. The weaving on these bags looks impeccable and the simple style of the bags has already inspired lots of knockoff totes in less interesting materials. For the price, perhaps one of those is your best bet. The idea intrigues me, but I can skip it for that kind of money. With $4400, you’re well on your way to a Birkin. Buy through Saks for $4400.

Except for maybe horsehair. It’s been used for centuries to make bows for string instruments, but Akris appears to have cornered the modern market on luxury horsehair purses with their line of Akris Ai Tote Bags. As far as I’ve been able to find, other brands have used horsehair to accent their designs, but this is the first bag in a while to use the material as the main attraction. The upside is that using the material doesn’t harm the animals in any way; the downside, unfortunately, is that the medium version costs a whopping $4400.

Horsehair is an interesting material for sure. I played classical strings for the better part of a decade, so I know how even and uniform it can look when treated and pulled tight, and it’s more or less endlessly renewable. The weaving on these bags looks impeccable and the simple style of the bags has already inspired lots of knockoff totes in less interesting materials. For the price, perhaps one of those is your best bet. The idea intrigues me, but I can skip it for that kind of money. With $4400, you’re well on your way to a Birkin. Buy through Saks for $4400.

It looks like a hurricane is going to take summer with it this weekend. Pffff. I knew it, I mean, it is back to school time and everything, but ever since I saw September 1st on my cell phone yesterday, even if it’s unbearably hot here in New York, everything’s different. Everyone is running everywhere, the email boxes are exploding and I’ve even started getting invites to fashion week!  Whoaaaaa, easy there, slow it down!

Mmmmm, I seriously have to consider thinking about…

- Packing away my jean shorts : Like all girls in the world, I spend my summer in jean shorts (with the pockets hanging out the bottom, of course). Aaaah, it was awesome. But yeah, hello creativity. Jean shorts and a shirt, yep, all summer long. I don’t know how to dress myself anymore.

- Getting back up on my heels : Wait what? Heels? The word simply disappeared from my vocabulary when I started being all cool in my flats. I swear, I tried on a pair of stilettos on monday (yes, this word still exists, why would you think otherwise?), and I just about fell flat on my face in the middle of the store. Classy.

- Putting on my makeup : Listen, well first wait, where is my makeup? During the summer, I end up with blush + mascara, even on red carpet days (?). Even just saying the word “foundation” in my head gives me chills up my spine.

- How to do my hair : Aaaaah, the bun is totally over, I CANNOT keep just tossing it up. Even Scott said to me yesterday (and I’m telling you, September first does something to everyone!) (breathe Garance, inhale exhale), “So I was thinking that from time to time, maybe, just maybe, and it’s just a suggestion, you know, but maybe I was thinking you could do SOMETHING with your hair?” I didn’t take it personally. But I don’t know that I remember how to turn a hairdryer at all.

- Get waxed : —— —- — Naaaaan I’m totally just kidding.

Okay, off we go kids, to work! It’s back to school! For real now! Bonne journée!

—————-

PS1 (C’mon no, not the bag! How many times am I going to have to say this?) : But yes of course, take a closer look, this photo totally makes sense with the subject du jour. It represents the coolitude of summer, no?  Am I right or am I right?!

PS2 : Am I right ? Or right ?

PS3 : Ok, I really gotta quit it with the rosé. That, too, is summer. Aaaaah, how stupid is this back to school stuff?!

Translation : Tim Sullivan

Rie, Design Student

Vintage blazer & top, shoes she couldn’t remember.

Can I just tell you all that this picture made me want to run over to Bottega Veneta and buy every single wallet shown?! The kaleidoscope of colors and materials makes me feel like a kid in a candy shop. Only this is a luxury leather goods candy shop, the best kind of shop in my opinion.

We leave out the PurseBlog men way too often. These Bottega Veneta Wallets are just for you guys, as the dimensions are a bit larger. Materials include intrecciato leather, ayers, stingray, ostrich, and crocodile. There are many color options (as shown above).

There is a reason why a wallet is an amazing gift for a man in your life. Every man carries some form of a wallet with them everyday. While personal preference comes into play, Bottega Veneta offers so many options that you can not go wrong. And I mean, look at the picture above! Are you drooling? I am drooling over men’s wallets on a Wednesday, and that means this is a good middle of the week treat. Buy via Bottega Veneta online.

Who’s that girl carrying an ostrich Hermes Birkin walking to the set of her hit TV drama in NYC?

If you guessed Kelly Rutherford, you are correct! This bag is a Lily Van Der Woodsen favorite, as Kelly has been seen carrying this bag before.

In fact, Kelly Rutherford is known to use her personal Hermes collection as part of her Gossip Girl wardrobe. We all know Kelly is a huge Hermes fan, in fact her first son is named Hermes (though she states her love of the brand is not directly correlated to his being name). The gold ostrich Hermes Birkin is and always will be a classic. With Gossip Girl filming in full force, my excitement for the return of the show is building.

Check out BagThatStyle for a peek at what your favorite Gossip Girl characters are wearing!

I originally wanted to call the post title ‘Golden Warts’, ‘Explosive Fungals’ or ‘Sprouting Clusters’ any words/definitions that are associated with Type HPV (Human Papilloma Virus)…don’t ask me why.  Googling images on warts and ignoring a bowl of apple crumble next me was a gagging experience, but a word ‘Excrescence‘ came up (thanks Shini) is a perfect word to describe my DIY-ed embellished-wart-like socks….sounds beautiful but is contagious. Dozens of golden-metallic flowers and cheap pearls (originally neckalaces from Primark, de-chained) were painstakingly sewn onto a pair of H&M lace ankle socks, I used a kitchen roll as a foot dummy which sadly later became unusable.  It may look un-wearable but it does a couture-isque look to it,  I would give it a go and try wear it at LFW, no?

Anyway, whatever that twice-yearly span of time is, Rachel was in the thick of it yet gain for this episode of The Rachel Zoe Project. More gowns were scoped, more tiny disasters avoided and more tranny heels considered. Oh yeah, and Kate Hudson dropped by and was totally charming, and no one said anything about Taylor, and there was something with chicken legs that I’d rather we never spoke of again.

Remember how we were in New York last week? Well, scratch that, the gang went to Milan this week. Don’t get it twisted, though, it was still fashion week – it was just Milan Fashion Week. Our vagabond fashionistas were still in search of Oscar options for Cameron and Demi (at this point, we’re on a first-name basis with these people), and there are only, like, four dresses in all of Rachel Zoe industries. Fashion emergency! Literally.

Because so few dresses had already been pulled, a lot was riding on Milan to find additional Oscar dresses. Unfortunately, at least one of Rachel’s favorite looks had already been reserved for another stylist, which made the Italian trip that much more important. Rachel’s life is a series of little panic attacks, and Oscar season is doubly so, but you wouldn’t know it by the fact that Rachel zipped out of Italy to meet up with client Kate Hudson in London.

Kate had apparently called Rachel to London just to style her for and accompany her to the Burberry show, which seems like a great reason to charge a plane ticket to a celeb that has more money than god anyway. Rachel seems to have a bit of a girl crush on Kate, who seems totally worth of such affection – it was odd to see Kate Hudson Daughter Of Goldie Hawn drinking cappuccino and wearing a $35 yeti jacket and acting like a much more personable Hills girl.

Speaking of funny jackets, Rachel showed up to the Burberry show wearing a jacket that looked like the high-fashion equivalent of leafy camo. (If you’ve ever been in a Bass Pro Shop, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve never been in a Bass Pro Shop, you’re a lucky person.) When Kate eventually emerged out of the black minivan (US arrivals are so much more chic) to go to the show in the rain, she was wearing a ultra mini sequined dress that I would generally not recommend for moments when you’ll need to exit a vehicle in front of photographers.

Burberry’s show was incredible, as anyone that followed last season’s shows surely remembered, and I would appreciate it if I could get a pair of those shirling boots FedExed over immediately. For research, of course. I’ll send them back when I’m done. Promise. Throw in the quilted leather motorcycle jacket while you’re at it. Research. It’s very important.

Back in the car after the show, Kate and Rachel were talking like two average girlfriends that had just had a few cocktails and seen a really good movie, and perhaps hidden a few of those cocktails in their handbags for the show. And then Kate sang some Stevie Nicks a cappella, and I’ve never really thought one way or another about Kate Hudson in the past, but I’d like her to be my new best friend. She’d fit right in. I get the impression that she’d fit in almost anywhere, she just has one of those personalities that we all wish we could have where nothing really bothers us and we actually do all the spontaneous things that we dream of. Naturally, being rich probably helps her be that person.

When they arrived back to Rachel’s hotel room, The Rodge was sacked out on the bed in a bathrobe, and the frequent incidence of bathrobes in this show makes me feel like I need to go buy a giant fluffy white one in order to accurately watch and write about these people. It would sort of be like Method acting, but instead, Method recapping. I can’t truly know them until I’ve sat for an hour in their bathrobes. Or something. Anyway, while they were all sitting around chit-chatting, Kate tried to convince Rachel to go with her to Rio, but Rachel does not wear bathing suits or go in the water or do anything fun, which unfortunately seems to be the result of negative body image issues. I bet Kate could convince her. She seems like she could convince anyone of anything.

After that bit of fun, Rachel jetted off to Milan to join Brad for the Italian shows. But wait, before the shows, we had to see the jewelry. The vintage jewelry, along with the vintage clothes and bags and hats. Vintage shopping seems so much more fun and triumphant than regular boutique shopping, particularly since someone like Rachel already knows what she’s going to see in a current-season boutique anyway. This show is full of all kinds of fashion porn, but the few minutes spent in the Milan vintage shop were easily my favorite. I wanted to crawl into that place and build a fort of wool ponchos under the racks and live there forever.

Once vintage shopping was done, Rachel went on to Alberta Ferretti and then to Missoni, where they saw a bag that was partially made out of the, uh, “leather” from chicken legs. I respect a bit of oddness, but the only reaction I had to chicken leg leather was something along the lines of, OMG WTF KILL IT WITH FIRE. Luckily, things quickly moved on to the gorgeous knits for which the company is known, and I would not be opposed to building a poncho tent in the Missoni showroom either, as long as they agreed to remove the chicken leg bags.

Unfortunately, The Rodge took the opportunity to connect the Missoni family business to the awkward topic of Rachel’s dubious future parenthood, and Rachel still seemed entirely uninterested in having children. Not all women want kids – I’m only 24, so my mind could change, but I’m not particularly smitten with the idea and I never have been. Rachel doesn’t seem like a person who would enjoy being a mom, and there’s no reason for her to feel bad about that. If kids were so important to The Rodge, why did he just now decide this, when his possibly-too-thin-to-be-fertile, 39-year old wife is having all kinds of career success?

But next it was on to meet up with Donatella Versace, and god knows you can’t talk about wholesome things like babies and families when in the presence of Donatella. I don’t generally like to comment on how people look, but, uh, Donatella sort of looks like a fabulous Italian muppet. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way – she’s such an outsized, odd character of her own making that you have to think she’s well aware of it, not to mention that a huge portion of her face is man-made anyway. Donatella didn’t seem entirely jazzed about Rachel or the repeated requests that she come to LA to visit, but they did the fake-y industry cheek kissing thing and then the show was fantastic and I feel like the entire fashion world sort of sustains itself on the energy of that kind of pretension.

As if the fashion shows haven’t been fabulous enough, Rachel then had to do a quick-change into a party look and go swill free booze and grope amazing jewels and handbags and socialize with Julianne Moore at a Bvlgari party. The Rodge was bitching the entire time that he and Rachel never get any sexytime, but Rachel seemed entirely disinterested in the prospect in favor of fretting over her shoes. Since the boots she was considering were more or less walking sex, I can see why she already felt fulfilled on that front.

It wasn’t all fun and games back at Camp Zoe, however. Remember that Marchesa dress from last week? When Rachel called back to LA to get an update, Ashley told her that the designer seemed to be sort of hedging on whether or not Rachel could have the dress, and they would’t tell her where it was or if it was available. Since no amount of bling and booze and The Rodge can distract Rachel from wanting Cameron (or whoever, I’ve lost count) to have a Marchesa moment, she was brought straight back to earth with the disheartening news.

Rachel had also lost a couple more Oscar dresses that she had been counting on, and back in the hotel in their bathrobes, The Rodge decided to pick a fight over it. He doesn’t seem to want Rachel to vent about anything ever, which is not really helpful, as a woman, when all you want to do is bitch. He also doesn’t seem to understand that it’s not possible to end business relationships with major designers over one broken promise, which you would think he had picked up by now. Everyone’s screwing everyone else in this business; all that matters at any particular moment is whether you’re pitching or catching, if you know what I mean.

Winter white (which is just a warm tone of ivory, but we’ll go with the season-appropriate name) came around as a trend a couple of years ago and never really went away, and it’s a nice alternative to not only the dark colors of fall dressing, but also the outdated rule that one shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day. If any of the people who still subscribe to that notion can look at the Burberry Quilted Patent Tote and tell me truthfully that it wouldn’t be beautiful with a charcoal sweater and dark denim, I’ll be very surprised.

I might normally regard this bag as too simple for me, but the shiny gunmetal hardware has totally won me over. Instead of skewing traditional, as most people probably expect of Burberry, the clean-lined buckle takes on a modern military look that’s as cool as it is unexpected. The bag’s shape is classic, the color is lush and the details are trendy, which is a formula that almost always equals a great bag. Buy through Nordstrom for $1395.

Camo-print has such a negative connotation to so many people, believing it is overly masculine and as far from fashion forward as possible. But this is not the case. Camo can be cool, it just has to be done properly. Be & D does that with their Barclay Tote.

Be & D is known for their rocker-like studs. And the Barclay tote has the studded accents one comes to expect from Be & D, but only at the front sides and back sides of the bag. The center panel features the camo print while the sides feature military green pebbled leather.

I know some of you may think this bag is too down and dirty, but paired with a crisp white shirt and khaki pants or jeans, it would add an unexpectedly chic military touch. Buy through ShopBop for $1290.