We all want the ‘it’ bags for many reasons; they’re new, fancy, designs are usually more daring and of higher quality.  Over everything else [especially trendy design] we expect that a designer bag with a designer price will continue to be a workhorse for your carrythings for years.  I certainly expected this from two recent purchases, an Alexander Wang Diego bag, and a Rebecca Minkoff Jane satchel.

Both were grabbed online from Shopbop, with duties and fees prepaid using their Shopbop Global import service via DHL.  The Wang was a gift to myself, while the Jane was something I grabbed for my mom.  I mistakenly assumed these two bags (worth US $825 and $475 respectively, before taxes and duties, which is an additional $285.09) would be usable and not show signs of wear and tear until many months had passed – I was severely mistaken.

The Alexander Wang had piping defects after a month, and the leather strap literally began to tear after two.  My mom ended up using the Rebecca Minkoff satchel for three days before the outer turnlock clasp broke, rendering the satchel unable to close and unusuable.  Upon looking closer, Minkoff and Wang products have one commonality - they’re both made in China.

I am both appalled and disgusted; for that amount of money, these designers should have a country [or at least a factory within China] with higher manufacturing standards create their products. I can’t see how a bags that are nearly five hundred and nine hundred dollar bags must be manufactured in China.. it all comes down to profit margins.

Whatever happened to having quality standards for extremely expensive accessories?  It’s a pity these ‘it’ bag designers have sold their customers up the creek.

So after everyone with an extra 15 pounds to lose freaked out over Kate Moss’ lolsome ‘nothing tastes as good as skinny feels’ quote  from 2009, there has been rippling shudders and backlash every now and again.

The worst is the revelation that Zazzle, a t-shirt company, has made freaking kid’s tops emblazoned with the quote, and the girl wearing it sure don’t look to happy.  While this was clearly a game to get free PR, it’s still pretty awful.

Way to go, Zazzle. WAY TO GO.

It’s a weird thing when you have an over Photoshopped face next to one that’s done properly, especially when one is in such close proximity to the other.  Check out AllSaints Girl’s face; she’s completely whitewashed and free of all signs of life, while her Keith Richards-esque cohort is full of unique facial lines and general awesome weirdness – they look completely strange beside each other!

This is a case of excessive Photoshop on the ladyface.  One can understand wanting the woman looking younger by buffing out a few puffs and wrinkles here and there, but everything?!  Too much, far too much.

When I heard that Riccardo Tisci would be designing Converse Addict kicks under Givenchy, I was intrigued, though did not expect to be this disappointed.

These sneakers are not only boring, but if it weren’t for that Givenchy cross on the tongue, I would be disgusted at the efforts.  This appears to be the same old Chuck we’ve seen for decades, only with some animal type foil printing over the bulk of the shoe, and some tiny heel studs that one can hardly notice.

Not only are they unimpressive, but they’re only available in Japan.. sneakerphiles in the rest of the world will have to wait on eBay listings and get completely ripped off.  Points for attempting to distract us from the lack of sneaker design by having the model wear busy printed leggings, though.

No word on price, though one can assume it will be much more than they’re worth.. cue resounding boos.

When your email appears from a major designer’s email blast list with a severe grammar slip in the subject line, one can only wonder who is actually writing the content.

For all who feel they may require a tutorial: The Difference Between Your And You’re

It’s been about two years since I’ve gone to a BCBG shopping event presented by Fashion Magazine, and it seems that the party has been put on the priority back burner.  The last event was quite good; a photo op place in front of the store, a proper red carpet, loads of visitors and lots of conversation from industry types and label fans alike.

Despite previous experiences, this year’s event was an incredible let down.  One couldn’t even easily tell if the store was actually open, much less holding an event – there were waiters, though they numbered themselves almost 1:1 to every customer.  The beverages were non-alcoholic (points given due to creative use of Maynard’s Fuzzy Peaches as garnishes), though the sweets were lovely.

Aside from the additional help walking around with bits and bites, it was difficult to discern that anything in particular was going on.  There was a Fashion Magazine hard poster by the cash, though there was nothing else to confirm the magazine’s presence other than a few magazines strategically placed amongst merchandise.

It was quite a disappointment considering what this event could have been, and what it has been like.. perhaps next time they’ll send out invites more than one day before the event occurs.

The kicker? I had a rip-ass outfit made up, and it was all for naught! I called it Cheap Monday Rambo; I’m re-using it for a Friday engagement.  Faugh.

It’s been well over six months since Steve Madden’s online brand manager and I discussed a collaboration entailing a few shoe mentions in exchange for merchandise.  Over the last half year, he has fed promises of merchandise that has failed to deliver and completely stopped returning contacts [emails and tweets] of both myself and their contracted social media manager (her tour of Madden duty has since ended).

While SM shoes appeared to be getting their act together, it is regretfully clear that the Steve Madden brand has no intention of going through with their end of the bargain despite continuation with their social media managing.

Steve Madden, if you’re going to run successful campaigns and make agreements with online resources, you should be following through.  This kind of empty promising and snubbing is very unbecoming of a brand, is entirely unprofessional and proves the Steve Madden team can’t be trusted to follow through.

Concerning the particular rep that made promises they couldn’t keep, you know who you are and I am very disappointed in you.

There has been a happy ending!! Check it out

This isn’t a PR blog, though since so many fast writers receive them nowadays, the discussion has officially become relevant.  The amount of fashion PR-sent mail I receive in a week is staggering; while this is fantastic, some of the messages are incredibly humorous for all the wrong reasons.

As editor driven journalism’s world has been taken over by bloggers, the PR world has seemingly been taken over by a group of people determined to get their message out in all the wrong ways.  Like editor proofed publications, [most] reputable bloggers have grown beyond their table scraps media release days, and are looking for some quality release content with proper imaging.

Let’s examine the top PR fails!

1. No images, or ones of low quality.  You can have the most detailed text description of a brand, look or item and still not capture the attention of your recipient.  If you must be asked to provide an image, or that of a higher resolution (think grainy PDFs), the release has likely discouraged potential writers.
2. Using movies as release reasons. Citing Wall Street 2 or Eat, Pray, Love as the reason to hawk your client’s wares is cheesy and not going to gain any free press.  If topics are that slim, get creative.. there are many reasons to wear a suit other than some ex-Disney child running around a thriller sequel screen.
3. Spelling your recipient’s name or website wrong. Typos are a bad enough representation of any professional, but piecing the website or a person’s name in a very ESL-type manner is humiliating for both parties.
4. Improper content.  Forwarding a message from a trade show or the like is not only showing how little you want your product shown, but just how little you care about branding.
5. Offering Facebook as a route for data collection.  Facebook is fine for the masses, but if a firm thinks enough of a website to offer a customized release, Facebook is not a place to route them for information harvesting.  Regardless of whether the data is there or not, if you send a release, prepare to include that information within it.
6. Offering a sample, then reneging.  If you agree to send a sample, you should be sending a sample.  If you cannot send the sample at that time, you should be offering to re-schedule delivery to another time in the near future.
7. Improper verticals. If I’m into fashion, releases containing information on music (non fashion related) or wholesale leather gloves for a website that only reviews clothing shows zero consideration or research of the release recipient.
8. Not knowing your recipient’s nationality.  Most of the time it’s irrelevant that I’m Canadian and not American, though for certain location sensitive releases, it makes content completely irrelevant; this could be avoided by a quick introduction email asking where the writer is located.
9. Not responding to an inquiry.  Sending an email 2 weeks later apologizing for the intense workload isn’t cool, unless it’s Fashion Week.
10. Not providing a flyer for your giveaway/contest. It’s as important to have a properly written release, as to have an image to support it.  Not only will readers respond better to visuals, but the writer will too.

Plastic shoes (and everything else PVC) are a massive pet peeve of mine for many reasons, the biggest being that they wear terribly.  That being said, Urban Outfitters has some exclusive brands carried that have created some super cool footwear but in heinous plastic instead of leather.

The item of main angst is BDG’s two tone boat boots ($68); they could look so amazing if they were in leather instead of PVC.  Due to their man-made construction, they also have a really weird plastic smell, but if you can get past that, you’re in the clear.

Other awesome shoes that could truly benefit from leather-ification are the Ecote Engineer boots ($68), Chelsea Crew Cut oxfords ($58), BDG’s slip on oxfords ($48) and BDG’s saddle shoes ($48).  It could be so awesome at UO if things were more leathery!

Their jacket was made famous by girls primed for emotional and physical abuse by more attractive guys, but Summit (who owns Twilight’s brand pimping rights) isn’t having any of it.  Since BB Dakota re-named the famed jacket Bella from the old not-as-dollar-signy name.

Summit needs to get over things.. it was used in the movie, it got well known and now they’re capitalizing off the popularity – this is the natural progression of ‘as seen in’ items.  It’s not like the jacket was knocked of by BB Dakota, branded as a Twilight product, then hocked at sale.

Summit needs to relax.  Their Twilight franchise is ultimate shit and they should be thankful there are disillusioned females in this world willing to pay for their brand of pseudo horror vagina fantasy.

It sounds like they’re really close.  Even if that’s the case, Mike & Chris bounced back from the big B, Christian Lacroix has been rescued – hell, even bore-tastic Escada has been saved from the brink of financial oblivion.

American Apparel’s 2nd quarter losses amount to $5-7 million in losses, and shares have plummeted 66% over the last year - all that equals a hair away from filing Chapter 7.

Over the last year AMAP has been expanding their design haul to so much more than the standard tees and undie variety, and it would be an immense shame if the brand would collapse.

Besides.. where the hell would hipsters and fashionphiles shop for their tank thongs?!!

M.A.C. was insensitive to the obvious plight of Mexican women in Juárez, and has decided to not ship their upcoming cosmetic collab with Rodarte.

They’re still donating the projected proceeds from the sales of the Rodarte collection to the women of Juárez (a charity has not been chosen as of yet), though for an unknown reason they feel this uproar was a deal breaker for the collection sale.

Yeah, M.A.C. could have been more sensitive.  Sure, these things could have been thought out before release and definitely avoided, but the bottom line is M.A.C. could have rebounded from this slip quite easily with half an effort.

Selfridges created a gallows where a McQueen creation hung only days after his passing [from hanging] and Barneys featured a bloody shooting display, but they didn’t close up shop – they met the public’s disdain head on, and continued to run their business.

At the end of the day, because the public wasn’t handled with their usual kid gloves, M.A.C.’s complete Rodarte campaign has gone down the toilet.

As many of you know, AllSaints is [still] having a sale.  As part of my personal torture, sometimes I like to check back and see if items I’ve been yearning for are on sale.  As it turns out, the Lo Folk Gun Fit jeans were still in stock and mightily discounted ($43.50 from $145) and still had my size.

I put them in my basket, and went to checkout.  The site had assumed I was in the USA, so when I changed my ‘ship to’ destination, the $0 shipping fee to America was replaced with $25 to Canada.  That’s right.  25 dollars to ship to Canada, plus the prospect of import fees – thanks for jerking Canadians, AllSaints!

Urban Outfitters may be founded by those with shit morals, but it’s good at what we need it to be: a place for fast fashion for the hip-loving modern spender.  My near 16 year old sister happens to quite enjoy UO, so I decided to hit up the Buchanan Street location in Glasgow for a gift find.

This may have possibly been the most boring fast fashion retail outlet that I’d yet been to… and that says something.  The store was filled with paper thin blouses and shapeless playsuits; even the Vancouver UO has a more startling selection than this one.  There were items on sale, but they were only more thin blouses and shapeless playsuits that roused less than interest (that’s saying something, since I usually love shapeless playsuits).

It was then I happened on the Kirkland Signature button ups.  Yep.  KIRKLAND SIGNATURE, the freaking Costco clothing brand.  It wasn’t a mistake, because there were 10 of them – all discounted and sitting amongst other various UO house labels and vintage reworks – one really felt odd about it.

The only saving grace was its designer sale; a £40 anchor knit cardi by Le Mont St Michel and the Vivienne Westwood Anglomania flower leggings for £80.  Sadly, it was all too much fail to warrant a purchase… no Vivienne for me, no gift for sister.  Sad, sad.

Like, teenagers who, like, have 2010 worthy slack jawed diction are totally all the rage at Macy’s.

Lourdes [Lola] Ciccone-Leon is fronting her mom’s new affordable cash grab range at Macy’s, which means that the entire setup is one massive cash cum spotlight grab.

Good for Madonna, I figure – she’s [likely] menopausal and still kicking ass and taking our dollars.  If only we didn’t have to deal with Lola’s take on her mother’s range and My Chemical Romance, which in case you didn’t know is the ‘THE BEST BAND EVER for realzzzz‘.

Ahhh, the musings of a 14 year old.

This never seems to get old!

In case you weren’t already aware, Gilt Groupe has had a Japanese site since March 2009, built an iPad app as soon as the iPad was launched, created Gilt Noir for their 0.01% top customer base and still won’t ship outside of USA on their dot[com] website.

That’s right, Gilt does not want your business if you:

• Hold a shipping address outside of the USA or Japan
• Hold a credit card with an American or Japanese billing address

That means that not only is Gilt denying most of the world access to their products, but that their current policy dictates even if a Canadian that holds a US shipping address or uses a shipping receiver in America that they’re not welcome.

It seems that for everything Gilt does to innovate in their field, they remind us that they only care about a precious few customers in the world.

Sicilian boutique New Form is against lemming fashion – so much so that they photoshopped a photo of one of the most disgusting human beings the world has ever known.

The ad you see on the left was put up in a public ares, each poster being 18 feet tall.

It goes without saying this is a corporate failure, though they certainly got what they were looking for — international attention for their little shop at the most minimal fiscal cost, though it may have cost them their reputation.

Who knows… maybe Italians are a lot more lax about putting genocidal maniacs on ads.

After weeks of pushing the much hyped $1/£1 anniversary sale, the event occurred yesterday/this morning (depending on your whereabouts).

The sale began at roughly 7:30PM UK time, 4:30PM Australia time.  While the Aussies, Europeans and everyone in between was tweeting their miraculous finds, North American Outnet customers were left wondering what was going on.

The reason behind this was the time of sale opening was unannounced; we were to wait on the edge of our seats all day and night for an email to be sent to the email we RSVP’d with, to tell us the sale was open to our market.

The Outnet totally screwed North America.

How, you ask? Let’s lay it out.

The sale started between 3:47AM to 6:47 AM in North America.  While 7 o’clock is manageable, it’s incredibly unlikely that any customers will be up on a Thursday night/Friday morning to actually participate.

This is also a crowd that was waiting on pins since earlier that day; I saw tweets from other sale hopefuls at 12AM Friday saying they were running out of steam from an already 6 hour strong notification wait.   Having customers wait all evening and all night is a dirty trick, and it’s truly unfair.  Note the time for the British sale went off perfectly with end of day shoppers; this cooperated with working individuals who could leave their email open and do other tasks while they wait – North Americans were expected to stay up all night to get the same sale.  To add insult to injury, The Outnet tweeted that over 800 items were already bought – while us N.Americans had to sit by and wait.

To beat the time wait, North Americans who finally received their notification email that the could go mad shopping weren’t even provided entrance because the items were already sold out.  They received this wicked screen, and were told too damn bad.

This sale was a complete demonstration of how not to market and execute a sale; the lack of determined sale time was stressful, the broken up sale times were not fair to buyers and the ‘we’re closed’ screen provided to North American shoppers is incredibly insulting.

While I’ve loved the Outnet for its entire first year, I feel like I’ve been duped and am curious as to how the Outnet feels they can gain back the trust of the customers they cast aside.

A friend of mine from Vancouver was served electronically with notice today, concerning something she posted on her blog regarding Peter Nygard’s disapproval concerning a recent CBC documentary on him and his business.

Regardless on what The 5th Estate has to say, as long as their statements are not slanderous, this falls under free speech.  Blog articles, providing they are also not slanderous, fall under free speech as well.

Just because there are certain perceptions concerning your company you don’t have the right to bully them into compliance.

Watch The 5th Estate’s documentary on Peter Nygard here before he and his pack of lawyers bullies me into taking this piece down.  At least he can’t force me to wear any of that awful clothing he designs.

French Connection is doing a great deal of work to undo the damage of their bro loved, long reigning ‘FCUK’ shirts.  Curiously, their first wave of business has been create new slogan tops to push their odd ‘this is man, this is woman’ pseudo wildlife documentary campaign.

These tops are not any less tacky than the FCUK prints, so it’s clear that French Connection hasn’t learned from their mistakes.  We’ve all seen shirts like this in joke shops; cheaply attaching text to the chest area in an attempt to draw males’ visions into the trap.

It’s time for French Connection to grow up and focus on actual designs, emerge from this financial red zone and provide a style that goes beyond cheap jokes and visual trickery.