Search This Blog

Friday, February 29, 2008

MY FAVORITE GOWNS FROM THE FALL 2008 COLLECTIONS

Angel Sanchez, who became a household name thanks to Sandy Bullock, continues to impress with his body-conscious, figure-flattering designs, like this purple floor-length strapless number.





Amanda Wakeley's graphic take on the gown breathes life back into the black-and-white look.



Bottega Veneta, always sophisticated and flawlessly draped . . . this eggplant off-the-shoulder dress with fishtail hem is breathtaking.


Jenny Packham, new on the scene, creates a fluttering cocoon-like gown. The neckline here is simply divine, and refocuses your attention on the decollete after you are awed by the draping of this elegant taupe chiffon. Made edgier by the bright red booties peaking out from beneath the full, floor-grazing skirt.




BEST SALES & MARKDOWNS!!


shopbop.com, up to 70% off, end-of-season sale

Barney’s Warehouse - LAST DAY IS SUNDAY!

La Petite Coquette bra bins

net-a-porter.com, up to 60% off (see Stella McCartney dress)

delia*s.com

Intermix sample sale, ending this weekend at the Metropolitan Pavilion on W 18th Street - the next one is in August

yoox.com

eLuxury.com (see Derek Lam bag, 50% off)


more to come . . .

COOL SPOTS IN NYC - Fab Restaurants & Bars in Manhattan

Restaurants

Aroma
36 E 4th St. betw. Lafayett and Bowery
* great wine and Italian eats - 9.5 rating on Citysearch


Bar Americain
52nd betw. 6th and 7th
* gorgeous space; must try homemade potato chips with blue cheese dipping sauce


Bubby’s
120 Hudson St.
*famous brunch; good place to catch celebs in repose, with their kids, etc.


Cafe des Artistes
1 W 67th St (Cross Street: Central Park West)

* great people-watching, $$$

Chinatown Brasserie
380 Lafayette St. at Great Jones St.
* great "scene" and dim sum


Cube 63
63 Clinton St. betw. Rivington and Stanton
* byob sushi place, a fave of Gwyneth; tiny but awesome - must make a res and be on time!


Da Silvano
260 6th Ave.
* top Italian for 20+ years plus celeb hot spot


Dos Caminos
SOHO
* outdoor tables - great for happy hour margaritas
when the weather gets nicer

Euzkadi
* delish northern Spanish food and good DJ; try the fried goat cheese app!


Extra Virgin
w 4th St.
* celeb hot spot


Falai
68 Clinton St.
* excellent, inventive Italian (rec. by Dave from FI)


Highline Thai
835 Washington at Little West 12th
* 3 mod bars and delicious affordable apps


Il Baggato
2nd and Ave. A


Jules
St. Marks Place
* classic French bistro. Good lighting; great date spot!

La Mela
Little Italy


La Orange Bleu
Soho/LES
* belly dancer - great for bdays

Le Souk
47 Avenue B at 3rd St.
* awesome Moroccan cuisine and belly dancer! Make a res., especially if you want "the bed"; good bar scene late night as well!


Oliva
E. Houston at Allen St.
* excellent affordable tapas and good Spanish wines. Live music some nights


Paladar
161 Ludlow Street
* excellent reasonably priced Spanish cuisine and cool bar scene


Paradou http://www.paradounyc.com
Little West 12th
* outstanding French cuisine and special events in interior garden in Summer

* nice newsletter about tastings and trips - really enthusiastic oenophile owner

Pastis

Meatpacking, across from One
* despite being a tad overrated as a celeb-sighting spot, excellent steak frites - worth the wait

Picholine
35 W 64th (212) 724-8585
* amazing cheeses


Room 18
18 Spring St. at Mott
* phenomenal tapas; go early and get one of the cushion-laden window banquettes


Sala
344 Bowery
*tapas - yummy small plates


Tree
190 First Avenue; 212-358-7171
* French Bistro w/ outdoor seating


Xunta
1st Ave. betw. 10th and 11th
* awesome affordable tapas - must try bacon-wrapped figs!

Bars

Beauty Bar
http://www.beautybar.com
231 E. 14th Street

* get a cosmo and a manicure at the same time -what’s better than that?

Bemelmans Bar
Carlyle Hotel, Madison Avenue at 76th
* luxe, lively piano bar with delightful wraparound mural by the author of Madeline
* best (free!) mixed nuts/snacks in the city


Buddha Bar
Little West 12th Street

* a tad overpriced but quite the scene - just don't go on a Sat. night because of the glut of B&Ts

East Side Toy Co.
102 Norfolk St (betw. Delancey and Rivington Streets)

* speakeasy vibe

Five Ninth
Meatpacking, across from Pastis
* renovated brownstone w/ hip bar scene downstairs and great eats up; unmarked entrance - big wooden door


Gansevoort Hotel (Penthouse Bar)
18 9th Ave. in the meatpacking across from Pastis
* $18 cocktails on cozy leather banquettes; great patio and pool


Hudson Hotel Bar
356 W 58th St. (betw. 8th and 9th)
* Philip Starke-designed space w/ floors lit from underneath, lucite chairs; great cocktails

Mercury Lounge
The Pink Pony
* funky hipster crowd and "library" decor; good for after-dinner coffee


Punch & Judy
26 Clinton St at Stanton St (Directions: F, V at Delancey St.) (212) 982-1116
* great chocolate fondue; excellent date spot


Shalel Lounge
65 W 70th @ Columbus
* good date spot


The Stanton Social
http://www.thestantonsocial.com
99 Stanton St. on LES
* must try the onion soup balls; great cushy banquettes - good place to take your date if you want to impress her!!

Aamna Shariff

Aamna Shariff
Aamna Shariff
Aamna Shariff was born on 16 July 1982 in Mumbai, Maharashtra, India. She is a beautiful model and an elegant actress who has worked in some Pakistani and Indian television serials and couple of South Indian films. She got famous as Kashish for her role in TV serial Kahin To Hoga. In fact, a salwaz kameez brand called Kashish was also launched, after her.

Aamna will debut in her first Bollywood film Aloo Chaat in which she plays the main lead opposite Aftab Shivdasani.

Funky Find Of The Week: Tree Jewelry, Necklaces For Trees




This post has been updated in 2009 to include new necklaces for the trees. All are available for purchase.... seriously.- editor


I really thought I'd seen pretty much everything until I saw this, thanks to my friend Betsy Wills who brought this odd and incredulous product to my attention.







Tree Jewelry® are actual steel necklaces strung on indestructible marine line, finished with marine hardware and are said to last a lifetime (yours or the tree's, I am not certain).









Feel the need to adorn your Oak? Embellish your Maple?
Need to get the Little Alpine something to say your sorry?

To see pricing or to purchase, go here.

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Leslie Mann

Leslie MannLeslie Mann was born on November 11, 1972 in San Francisco, California, USA. She is an American actress who started out doing commercials at 17 years old, and beat out 500 other actresses in an open audition for her role in The Cable Guy.

THE NEW BRIDE



No longer is a poufy Cinderella dress the norm for gals walking down the aisle. Lauren Davis, for example, wore a custom-designed floor length Olivier Theyskens Couture feathered gown which the designer "sheared" to a minidress for the party (See VOGUE March 2008).


White is still customary, but a splash of color or band of black might be added. I positively ADORE the idea of wearing blue or green satin shoes with an ivory dress. Let it be noted, however, that Christian Louboutin has traded his signature red sole for baby blue when it comes to bridal footwear. Clever!


Above are some examples of dresses which may not have been designed with matrimonial pursuits in mind, but which would suit the occasion divinely. Top, a white Alice & Olivia gown is elegantly accented with black spaghetti straps and a wide black cummerbund waist. Bottom, Douglas Hannant translates the one-shoulder trend from day to evening, with a whisper-light silk gown trailing two thin sashes to the left, balancing the asymmetry of the design.

Donatella And Artist Tim Roelof : Dress Up The Runway




During fashion week in Milan, edgy Dutch collage artist Tim Roelof (based in Berlin) and Versace debuted their collaboration of fashionable, wearable art which consisted of four beautiful dresses utilizing artist Roelof's style with Donatella's designs and utilizing some of the famous Versace icons along with Berlin imagery.


Above: one of Tim Roelofs' 3 dimensional collage pieces for versace and one of the four dresses from the collection

Please note, the following text is from Wallpaper magazine:

Working with his own photographs and a pair of good ol’ fashioned scissors, Roeloffs’ three dimensional visual montages each depict an aspect of Berlin’s history and social landscape. For Versace, the artist created a total of twelve original works that were completed as recently as January this year.

Supplied with reference books by Versace, Roeloffs fused images from old ad campaigns with his trademark scenes of Berlin. The results range from people waiting for the tram dressed in Versace outfits from the 1980s, and figures lounging in a palatial interior filled with the label's neo-classical furnishings and a fragmented skyline of Berlin in the background.



'Donatella wanted to do something about Berlin because Gianni loved Berlin,' Roeloffs said. Armed with a list of artists to vet, a design team from Versace was dispatched to the city, where they discovered the Berlin-based Roeloffs and his work.

'I’ve been wearing the same clothes for the last 20 years, and I know nothing about fashion. I think they expected to meet someone in a suit. But I was very impressed with the result as I didn’t know how they planned to put photo-montages onto clothing. They did it very well and still maintained the dimensionality that’s in my work.'

Apart from specify that he work on both pink and yellow backgrounds, Versace gave Roeloffs the freedom to create what he liked. In addition to the Versace imagery, he was also given books relating to Gianni Versace’s personal interests, such as 1960s wallpaper, which inspired the floral motif that appears prominently in all four dresses.






Fresh off the back of our ‘Artists Relations’ story in this month’s issue, the sheer unexpectedness of this collaboration is what we found the most intriguing. While Versace epitomizes Italian glamour, Roeloffs is a true modern bohemian living in Prenzlauer Berg and exhibiting his work in the Tacheles, a bomb-damaged Jewish department store that is now a gallery run by an art collective in Berlin’s Mitte district. The two could not belong to further ends of the spectrum.

When he attended last week’s Versace show in Milan, Roeloffs readily admitted, “I arrived in such a chaos by train because I brought my two dogs, three kids and my wife with me. Of course, there was a limousine to pick us up and it was really like coming from the gutter to being at their level.”
Here are some of Tim's three dimensional collages that he created for the collection:






Below are a few more examples of Tim's work:






See the artist's site here.
The Versace site.


Wednesday, February 27, 2008

FAVORITE BRICK & MORTAR STORES


CHAINS (2+ stores)
The Intermix, NYC
Barneys New York
Anthropologie
Nordstrom
Forever 21
Sephora

ONE-OF-A-KIND
Henri Bendel, NYC
Bergdorf Goodman, NYC
Hildegard's, Aspen
Stacy Gemma, NJ
Nature’s Emporium, Fair Haven, NJ

The Town Shop, NYC

DISCOUNT
Loehmann's
Filene's Basement
Tuesday Morning
Marshall's

HOUSEWARES
West Elm
ABC Carpet & Home
Anthropologie
Smith & Hawken