My lumpy white sunglasses

When I first read about the white sunglasses trend this Spring, I immediately filed that with my list of crazy fads like headscarves, jumpers, and enormous Olsen-twins/Nicole Richie-type sunglasses*, a.k.a. stuff that might look cute and quirky on girls like Zooey Deschanel, but would be absurd(ly bad) on me.

Well, next thing I know, white shades started popping up on celebrity pictures everywhere—and you see the likes of Chloe Sevigny, Kirsten Dunst, Michelle Williams rocking the 80s look with these strange white Ray Bans.

Not to say that I’d ever be cool enough to pull off the borderline fug looks these girls regularly go for, but then again, I’ve always been strangely drawn to borderline fug fashion. And I do wear a lot of white in the summer. I was intrigued. A quick Google search informed me that the Ray Ban Wayfarers were pretty much the hottest thing in the 80s, back when it was okay to think Tom Cruise was cute in Risky Business. Anyway, Ray Ban relaunched the Wayfarer line at the beginning of this year for the Spring/Summer 2007 season, adding these hot new white and limited edition red versions. And at a $99 list price, it’s a bargain compared to your typical, overpriced Safilo-produced shades (Yep, your Gucci, Prada, CD, Chanel glasses were all made by the same folks in Italy, thanks to industrial districts and the development of regional specialty trades! So who wants to read my senior thesis? No?).



So, you say, I'm into questionable fashion trends too--where can I get these? Well, friends, another quick Google search tells us that we lowly non-celebs simply cannot get the red or white ones ANYWHERE (besides ebay, but ebay doesn't count cuz you never want to buy branded stuff from ebay where there's no guarantee what you're getting is authentic). Darn.

Wait… it's Nordstrom’s half-yearly sale to the rescue! I found the cutest knock-offs of the white Wayfarers, complete with those little metal rivets-things on the side, and best of all they fit my [large, flat] face and were, get ready for this--$10!! Done and done. And you know, they’re pretty great. I’ve pretty much cast aside my designer frames (which never fit my face very well anyway) in favor of these, cuz they’re summery, I can toss them around, and they make me feel instantly more stylish and cool with no effort. I’m not normally a fan of knock-offs, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be glad I only spent $10 on them in a few months when I realize how ridiculous they really are (see below).

* Trust me, I tried super hard to embrace this one. I have a famously (yeah, I’m kind of a big deal… to my 5 friends) big face, and wouldn’t it be great and flattering to cover it up with oversized sunglasses? Well, it turns out that besides being large in surface area, my face is also pretty flat, due to my lack of a nose bridge. Yep, me, MJ, and our missing noses. Sigh. Well, suffice it to say, those oversized frames simply do fit faces lacking a nose bridge. I give up.

Castor & Pollux Sample Sale

Oh, and I guess I didn't mention the Castor & Pollux sample sale that I went to on Saturday, after rounding up my less glamorous errands (buying paper towels, getting my Contrex fix).

Castor & Pollux
June 23, 2007

Overall: 4/5. Completely unlike the Gen Art event and not at all in a bad way. If you've ever been to the store, you understand - it's about the size of a large Manhattan bedroom, and is located on one of those first, quiet, leaf-light-dappled streets West of the gaudiness of the Christopher Street stop.
People: The owners very nicely congratulated me on my purchases (all from the bargain bins on the floor) and seemed chirpily busy as they talked to the regulars, ordered coffees from the nearby Starbucks, and printed out receipts from their Mac.
Prices: $100 even for a 3.1 Phillip Lim white cotton sweater and thin-wale grey corduroys, and brown embroidered Mint sundress.
Selection: If you weren't me, you might have been able to afford the REAL DEALS - it seemed like the entire store's merchandise was marked down 30-50% (as coded by little round stickers on price tags). Labels like Rodebjer, 3.1 Phillip Lim, Cacharel, and Sonia Rykiel. The stuff you'd design if you were a designer.

Gen Art Sample Sale

Oh, Sara.

Doesn't my sample sale schadenfreude just kill you after awhile?

The fact is, living in New York means that I can, on a Tuesday night, decide on a whim to change out of my pyjamas, hop on the subway and go shopping. At a sample sale, no less!

Gen Art Shop NYC
June 19, 2007

Overall Experience: 5/5. The lights, the cameras, the corporate sponsorship - all conspiring to make some young and artful fashionistas very happy on a summer's Tuesday night.
People: Well, the designers or the frenzied hipster maidens (and their obliging boyfriends)? The designers I met were all unfailingly nice and seemed happy and excited to be there. The shoppers were well dressed to a fault. The usual sample sale bonhomie - where garments and opinions are cheerfully swapped between strangers in the changing rooms - was in full effect. Chipper Gen Art photogs and swag booths from the likes of Fiji water and JetBlue didn't hurt the atmosphere, either!
Prices: Without getting insultingly specific, I paid less than $200 for a Grace Sun dress, Plume necklace, and Tucker blouse. I should also divulge that I didn't pay the $15 admission; the girl at the front just waved me in when I said I wanted to buy a ticket at the door. I know it went to a good cause, but, you know - score!
Selection: I recognized a lot of designers there that have been featured in Lucky and Nylon, and some that I had been hankering after after seeing their designs in ... those stores I can't afford. What was even better was that each designer had an array of styles and sizes; it definitely wasn't a pawing through the racks affair.

A quick word on the Fashion Pipeline

This... 'stuff'? Oh... ok. I see, you think this has nothing to do with you. You go to your closet and you select out, oh I don't know, that lumpy blue sweater, for instance, because you're trying to tell the world that you take yourself too seriously to care about what you put on your back. But what you don't know is that that sweater is not just blue, it's not turquoise, it's not lapis, it's actually cerulean. You're also blindly unaware of the fact that in 2002, Oscar De La Renta did a collection of cerulean gowns. And then I think it was Yves St Laurent, wasn't it, who showed cerulean military jackets? And then cerulean quickly showed up in the collections of 8 different designers. Then it filtered down through the department stores and then trickled on down into some tragic casual corner where you, no doubt, fished it out of some clearance bin. However, that blue represents millions of dollars and countless jobs and so it's sort of comical how you think that you've made a choice that exempts you from the fashion industry when, in fact, you're wearing the sweater that was selected for you by the people in this room. From a pile of stuff.

For better or worse, my senior thesis was in large part about the fashion pipeline. I love reading and learning about high fashion (haute couture, alta moda, etc.), but let's face it, how much of the designer "stuff" we see in Vogue or Harper's Bazaar can we realistically pull off or afford? For regular folks like us, it's all about the pret-a-porter (ready to wear), the diffusion lines, the lumpy blue sweaters, if you will. This blog will occasionally cover high fashion to see what trends are coming down the pipe, but mostly, I'm all about the "value finds", or those up-and-coming designers' clothes that can actually be affordable if you're willing to wait for the right sale. Anyway, thanks for reading, check back for updates soon!