It's Fashion Friday!: I'll Bring the Wallets, You Bring the Dough!!!!

Salvatore Ferragamo
Icona French Wallet $425
This one's for Grandma.

            Let’s get something straight. A stocking stuffer does not have its status determined by its size, but by its price. iPhone – NOT a stocking stuffer. Candy pooping reindeer – STOCKING STUFFER. Now that we have that straight… A fantastic holiday gift idea, and a particular favorite accessory of mine, is the wallet! Wallets, wristlets, cosmetic pouches, card cases, money clips: all of these delightful little gems come in a range of styles, qualities and prices. This means that you can get them as “I love you so much!” gifts to yourself, “Thanks for employing me,” gifts for your boss, “I had to spend a lot of money on you, but you have such horrible taste in everything I didn’t know what else to get for you,” presents for matriarchal family members, “Holidays are awkward - this is personal, but not so personal that there’s worry of wedding bells,” gifts for boyfriends/girlfriends, or even “This is a cute way to spruce up the inside of your purse and it didn’t cost me much!” for your girlfriends. Wallets as gifts for men tend to be a bit more personal as they seem to use one until it is completely falling to pieces and then replace it. With us ladies, it’s like handbags. Excess is to be expected. Different wallets exist for different bags, moods, and seasons.

Comme des Garçons
Bright Star Wallet $210

            Designer wallets all come with hefty multiple hundred dollar price tags. Even after selling them, I’m going to be honest with you – I'm not entirely certain why they’re so pricey. Saffiano leather is a draw, yes (that’s that lovely laser textured leather, and it does make your product more durable to things like that rude, grabby girl’s finger nails and cats). Brass zippers last longer and generally work a bit better. The colors are nice. As long as your product is made of leather and not plastic, however, it should be fairly durable! Maybe people won’t say, “OOH, she has a PRADA wallet!” when you go to pay for things, but do you really need to hear that to move on with your day? These fill the “had to spend a lot of money on you” gift category.

Miu Miu Matelassé
Leather Wallet $480

If you’re going to shell out the cash for a wallet/wristlet for yourself, it should at least have something exciting going on with its appearance, other than a designer logo. I love Comme des Garçons for interesting wallets. I can’t figure out for the life of me why they’re so expensive, other than the cool quotient. This little wallet sure is fun! It also comes in a pouch style (no strap, so sadly not a wristlet). Colorful. Shiny. Sure to bring smiles. They have some polka dot embossed pieces as well that are quite rich in color. For texture, Miu Miu does the matelassé leather wallets. I absolutely love this style. This is on the top end of what I deem an acceptable amount to pay for a wallet. I’m not even going to discuss wallets that cost more than this. There are people starving on the street in the cold. If you are thinking about buying an $800 wallet, I strongly suggest you think about just how ridiculous that is and buy the $480 wallet (which is ALSO ridiculous btw) and give the other $300 to a homeless shelter.

Hobo 'Lauren' Double
Frame Clutch $128

Let’s explore the personal/not so personal price range for girlfriends, girlfriends of family members, and just plain old NORMAL people. Some brands I really like for quality/style/price are Hobo, Lodis, and Cole Haan. Hobo makes the double frame clutch. The advantage to this lovely “wallet” is that you can fill it with all kinds of stuff for a night out on the town. It can take the place of a handbag. (It’s funny, gentlemen. As much as the ladies love to accumulate handbags, they find them to be a giant pain in the ass to haul around.) The drawback is that you have to hold it in your hand wherever you go, hence the term “clutch.” If you get a shiny one, though, it’s not so bad. You can stare at it in the light and entertain yourself whilst those around you start to wonder about your level of sanity. These run a little over $100 depending on the style. I don’t know anyone with one of these who doesn’t love it, including myself. 

Lodis 'Audrey'
Continental Wallet $88

Lodis just makes lovely leather products. Sometimes they have really fun wacky wallets for people who want something different. I have a fluorescent yellow one with dead flowers shellacked into it. They almost always carry very basic wallets – ziparounds, frame, continental (long), and French (short, squat). And business card cases! For a less expensive or a “thanks for employing me” gift.

Cole Haan 'Jitney'
Electronic Wristlet $78

I love the idea of a wristlet. It used to be that you could only get wristlets at Coach, but now Cole Haan has quite a few of them and I really prefer their leathers. I find the wristlet far superior to the clutch for normal daily use. You put that little loop around your wrist, and you let go, and it just hangs there! Tada! Magic. I can be absent minded and know that my wallet is attached to my body. Just like my mittens used to be. My brilliant friend Jenifer has an entirely different use for the wristlet. She uses multiples of them to organize the inside of her handbag. Coach should probably be paying her for the good press she’s giving them.

Lulu Wallet from Sears $9.98

Now if you’d like a cute stocking stuffer style wallet to give as a gift, you can pay a stocking stuffer price ($9.98) and purchase this one at Sears. It’s shiny. It’s silly. It’s fun. It’s probably going to fall apart in a couple of months. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Rather than being sad about poorly made $10 wallets, I would approach this the same way I approach broken wine glasses. The sooner you break them all, the sooner you get to pick out new ones! 

Cole Haan Reflective
Slim Wallet in
Tango Red $98

         If you want to buy a wallet, money clip, card case for your man, do not fear... I’m not going to leave you hanging. While I am not a man and can’t tell you for sure what I would need in a men’s wallet, I once sold quite a lot of them. From my experience, if you’re not 100% certain he likes ornately decorated stuff, he probably doesn’t want a jacked up wallet. Like this Cole Haan reflective wallet in Tango Red? PROBABLY NOT. It needs to be soft enough leather that it’s not going to be painful in the back pocket, yet also durable. It’s not a good thing when the corners start coming apart or the stitching starts coming out. Some guys stuff way more stuff than they should in those poor bi-folds. (No one carries trifold wallets anymore, except very strange clientele). I really liked to sell this textured bifold at Ferragamo, though I don’t remember it costing $295. Inflation? It’s simple and durable. If you’ve found a man worth keeping, this wallet is worth buying. Money clips are fun too for a more old-fashioned type, or someone who routinely has lots of cash. Just don’t get the magnetic ones. They seem really great, until that one absent minded day when the guy puts a credit card in with his cash…… 

Salvatore Ferragamo Bifold
in Embossed Calfskin $295

It's Fashion Friday!: Please Put The Pandora Back In The Box

           Jewelry is an extremely personal accessory. Unless you decide to inflate yourself to the size of a dumptruck, you can generally wear it for a lifetime. For that reason I assume that the more expensive gems have more thought put into their purchase. The more disposable ones - trendy things, mass produced things, anything that is devoid of sparkling gemstones - should be inexpensive. These things should be doubly inexpensive if they are ugly. Ugly jewelry should never be expensive.

            Now I must again stress that jewelry is personal. And I strongly encourage you to not be offended by my opinions as I share them. You may disagree with me. I am not judging you based on your jewelry choices. That being said, why are you people spending all this money on these fugly fugly fugly charm bracelets?! I do not understand the Pandora craze AT ALL. Not even a little.

They just don't make weird plastic
stuff like they used to.

Charm bracelets are not new to the world in any way. I have my mom’s charm bracelets from her childhood. They are sweet – fairly delicate chains with a modestly chosen number of charms, each with significance, evenly spaced so as not to look like metal bead vomit. Then there were the plastic charm necklaces of the 80’s. My friend Beth and I were reminiscing about them yesterday thanks to the Big League Chew they sell at Old Navy (yes, that is an odd stretch from one topic to the other isn’t it?). Long plastic chain links with strange plastic toys to hook onto them. Most of mine are gone because they were hand-me-downs from my stick-up-ass Aunt Kate who I’ve mentioned before. Naturally, I had to throw them out, as one must with all things attached to other things/people distasteful. I saved the few that were mine though. So, yes, these plastic ones were ugly. They were, however, SUPER CHEAP! They were made in China and intended for children.

It's funny how violent I feel
when I see adults wearing
peace signs.

As an adult, I have acquired a fondness for artisan jewelry. It’s not mass produced and it has character. Sometimes it’s affordable; sometimes it’s not. It goes without saying that I also enjoy the baubles from the glittery sections at Tiffany & Co. And I realize that there is also time and place for fun, silly, often ridiculous, costume-y jewelry. Where is the place for Pandora in this mix? Nowhere. I’m not sure how to adequately convey to you why this stuff is so dreadful. I’m not sure if Pandora jewelry is like cilantro – either you like it or you don’t and there’s no argument possible. I’m going to try though. If I can save a single confused soul from the evils that Pandora unleashed on the world, I will consider myself a hero for the weekend. That has to be worth at least one donut.

A peace sign hanging from pink sparkles… peace is a nice idea. Wearing a peace sign is tacky beyond belief. Leave that to the 12 year olds and the hippies. I’d rather have a panzer charm hanging from a diamond. 

In case you forget that
you had a daughter and
that you're not the dad?

This thing, left, splits in half and says Mother / Daughter on the insides. It costs $95. I don’t get it. 

Pandas are supposed to be cute. 

This panda bear looks like he is frightened to the point of gastrointestinal flash spattering (I just made up that term, but it's quite an image, isn't it?)  

A helmet for a square head.

A silver and gold football helmet for $130. Does the kind of girl who wears a charm bracelet like this actually play football? Not to mention at first glance I thought this was some sort of crematory oven.

A $450 angel. Creepy looking little thing, isn’t it? 

I don't have a nose.

$40 to advertise what you are wearing. Shouldn’t they pay YOU to wear this one?

PLUS, you have to buy the bracelet to put these things on! They range in price from $40 to OVER $1000. That’s for a 14K gold bracelet. That’s it. JUST 14K gold. 

Dear Bloomingdales, I'm just so disappointed.

So, just for fun, I thought it would be an interesting exercise to add up the price of one of these completed bracelets as they display them on the Bloomingdales website (Talk about selling out, guys! I thought you were supposed to be a classy department store). Here they show this picture of a beaded up barfcelet all pink and gold and silver with hearts and flowers. If you were to start fresh and buy the whole thing at once, bracelet, charms, and all, it would cost ….. ca-ching, ca-ching, ca-ching, $4280.

Sweet little Cartier orchids

Or, you could have a pair of these lovely diamond and white gold orchid sparklers for your ears by Cartier. Oh, and probably also a night at the Ritz. No, no. By all means, go back to Pandora. You are ABSOLUTELY making the right decision. 

It's Fashion Friday!: Got A Red Neck? How 'Bout A Scarf?

Cable Cowl Neck Scarf
Brooks Brothers $148
Lambswool & Silk Twill

           “I was starting to get aggravated last night when I thought about how I never make it through a fall season without forgetting to wear some of my fall weight coats. Somehow, I managed to amass this collection of great mid-weight outerwear, and it doesn’t get USED because I don’t go anywhere, and I spend all my time in puffer vests and North Face fleeces.” Talk about first world problems, THIS is how I opened my session with my therapist on Tuesday. Of all the more pressing, mood-affecting things I could have brought up, preparing my body for the temperatures between 32 and 65 was at the top of the list.

Yarnz "Floral Mosaic' Scarf
Nordstrom $110
Silk 

Autumn might be my favorite time of year coming from an apparel and fashion standpoint. Scarves (!), gloves, tights, sweaters, puffer vests, jackets, socks, hoodies, fleeces, and warm bedding abound and get to be mixed and matched to provide just the right level of warmth. It is the time of year when I get reacquainted with my good friends Goosedown and Cashmere. And apparently it is also the time of year when I forget that I went on some sort of psychotic coat collecting binge over the past three to four years (maybe it took longer than that) and now have enough mid weight coats to wear a different one every day for more than a week. “Sell them!” I hear you say. NO! I like them all!

I don’t actually want to talk about jackets. I would like to talk about scarves. The right scarf can make your jacket look much more polished. And if you are wearing a silk scarf, or something lighter weight, it can add some punch to your entire outfit. I was a bit disappointed when I saw that high necklines were a trend for Fall 2012. I find turtlenecks unbelievably constricting. And given my broad shoulders, anything that comes up around my neck like a halter tends to make me look like I could be a member of the USA Olympic Swim Team. High necklines attached to long sleeves have a similar effect – broad broad broad. This broad doesn’t want to look broad.

Salvatore Ferragamo
Gancini Print Scarf
Bloomingdales $340
Silk

Solution? The scarf! I can take any sweater or shirt with a low cut neckline and add a scarf to give myself a higher neckline, while also providing either a color or textural contrast to break up that length from left to right. Bonus: it warms up your neck. While I was working at Ferragamo they taught us several ways to style “foulards” (that is a large square silk scarf, for those not in the know), such as folding it in a triangle and tying it in a knot on the side of your neck. The triangle could go in the front. It could be folded into a long rectangle and tied around the neck. They even suggested that you could take two of them, tie the corners together behind your neck, and then cross them over your knockers and tie the other ends around the back into a “shirt,” but I would never suggest that unless you were going for a high class honiform.

Psp11 Printed Scarf
Societe Anonyme $272
Silk

Whether you’re searching for a traditional long scarf to hang down from both sides of your neck or a foulard to tie up near the collar, you shouldn’t have to fork over an arm and a leg to get one. If you spend less, you can buy more of them. I have two requirements by which I choose scarfs: pattern and palatability. Do I mean eat the scarf? Geez, no. The fabric is next to your face, however, so it should be lusciously soft. You wouldn’t sleep in sandpaper pajamas. Don’t wear scratchy scarves. Understood?

A scarf from Hermes or Ferragamo or a small selection of the other French and Italian fashion houses will break the bank. You aren’t just paying for the name; they are of higher quality (though I do believe that with anything other than the two aforementioned, you will be overpaying for what you get). They are created with detailed silk screening processes, using different screens for each color, have hand rolled edges, use the finest quality silks, and are very well-blocked (that gives the scarf its shape). Also, most of them aren’t made in China. That being said, very few people would actually notice ANY of these details if you were wearing one of these scarves. By all means, if you see a beautiful foulard that you’ve fallen in love with its pattern, and you have the money to shell out to buy it, gift yourself. If you are just buying it because of who made it, you, my friend, are a label whore. There. I said it. When you fold the scarf up to put it on, half the time, you can’t even see the pattern anymore anyway! It turns into an abstract version of its former self.

Nordic Fairisle Scarf
Johnstons of Elgin $65
Extra Fine Merino

My recommendation is to head yourself over to your local TJ Maxx or Marshalls and start touching their selections. When your hands find something that feels good, see if you like what it looks like. Touch first; look second. That will ensure you don’t end up with something your cat wouldn’t even sit on. If you’re really that appalled by the discount store idea, go ahead and waste your money at the department stores. Nordstrom has a good selection, but be prepared to pay for it. An even better idea than the department store is to visit your local galleries. Fiber artists often have woven and dyed scarves for sale, especially at holiday times. The price may be on the higher end, but then it’s truly a piece of art.

My favorite way to wear a scarf, if only I could pull this off.

Before I leave you, I must address a pet peeve…. The infinity scarf. What about this scarf says infinity? It’s a circle. It’s a mobius. It’s a cowl. Can we stop calling it an infinity scarf already? It doesn’t make any sense. My shoes form an unending oval around my feet, but I don’t call them infinity shoes… infinity pant legs. Infinity underwear. Infinity socks. Infinity sleeves. Infinity…