Shit We Want But Can't Afford: Part Two

Roland Mouret's totally obscene heels. These are what Maggie Gyllenhaal should have worn for Secretary. This is turning into a full-on Gyllenhaal week here.

Full Roland Mouret show report here.


P.S. Gemma Ward looks dumb as paint in absolutely every photograph ever taken of her. Like her eyes can't focus or something.

Shit We Want But Can't Afford: Part One

This is the sweetest coat we've ever seen, and it is way too good for Kirsten Dunst's bony shoulders. Sort of like Jake Gyllenhaal. Unless he's really boring and shorter than he looks on camera. It's such a pain in the ass remembering that hot celebrities can be just as boring as, like, the boy who sat next to us in gym class in middle school, who just sort of stared at the ceiling for three years.


Full Balenciaga fall show here. OK, seriously, we just thought of this: We've recently become a little obsessed with buying a summer house, which we have just about as much a chance of doing as flying to the moon on that new Richard Branson space-mobile. But this house obsession has us thinking that maybe we'll come around on weddings the way we're coming around on house-buying. (Problem: At this point, we associate weddings with divorce and mortality, possibly not in that order. This is, as you might expect, our boyfriend's totally very favorite thing to talk about.) But seriously, weddings, schmah, whatever. We need to skip the wedding and just throw a big party and spend all the money we would have been forced to give to caterers and shitty weekend DJs on Balenciaga dresses. Success!

Top Five: Embroidered Jeans

Well, we just called that "top five," but the thing about embroidered jeans is that they're almost over before we can discuss them. It's like—"Em-" and then it's over. Because these have about all the longevity of, say, a lava lamp. Even a lava lamp isn't quite as disposable as we'd like to finish out that metaphor, but the thing about anything more disposable than that is we've already forgotten what it is.

Above, Joe's Nirali Jeans, featuring "thick bohemian embroidered flowers in every hue and height sprout[ing] on the right leg and left back pocket." $275, proving once more that bohemian = stealth rich = thoroughly freaking annoying. These jeans are so, like, totally normal from the front, like you could go to dinner with somoene, and they'd be like, oh, totally normal, and then you turn to go to the bathroom or something, and you have crazy embroidered flowers all over your ass.


These Blue Cult Kate Stretch jeans are so subtle, embroidery-wise, that they almost don't count. Don't they kind of look like weird owl eyes? Er, not sure if we can totally recommend these, though we otherwise love Blue Cult. $142


These are not subtle. Not subtle in every way. And who thought that lime-green boots were a good styling option? Argh, the way things are going, this is turning out to be like "Worst-Ever Five" or "Five Shitty Options" or something. Caslon Embroidered Jeans. Ha! This is where we'd usually put the price, but these are sold out. That is so messed up. Maybe we're totally high and these are totally hot jeans.


And then, see, these True Religion jeans are totally unsubtle. Do we really need a pair of jeans with the embroidered design of a half-naked wood sprite or fairy or whatever she is? And what is that bizarre blue blanket covering the lower half of her body, like the wood nymph got all modest all of a sudden? So bizarre.


Is it just us or does that embroidery, placed where it is, look more like a rash than sewing? Habitual's Koi Embroidered Jeans, $228


And finally, these sort-of cute Sass and Bides. Still, it's like, "Oh, look at this chess piece on my ass." Sigh.

The Us Weekly Home Companion, Part 1

Honestly, we can't even begin to get into how fucking annoying this week has been.

We really did record this on the side of a highway, so excuse the occasional pause while we waited for some four-by-four to smash into the side of our car \\ contemplation of the possibility that our deaths would be recorded on Audioblogger, which would been very, very annoying and just a tiny bit cool.

The Us Weekly Home Companion, Part 2

Really, please excuse the clutter. Did we mention this is the issue with Jennifer Garner and Ben Affleck on the cover? This has been one motherfucking annoying week.

BS returns to its usual quasi-schedule on Monday, unless we're still in some part of the world without phone or Internet access, and we've drowned ourselves in the lake.

A Winner!

This Care Bear backpack has got to be the dorkiest thing we've ever seen, and thus, a winner! If you're saying, "But that's not nearly as dorky as what I have," then you didn't enter, and hmm, looks like you missed out on a Jocasi belt. If you did enter, then thank you so much, that is so wonderful, and now you know that what you have is not as dorky as you thought. P.S. to the person who sent in a picture of her Uggs: They are not dorky. They are just evil.

Anyway, congratulations to our winner Julie!

OK, We're Dragging This Out a Little

So please accept our apologies in the form of this censored Dolce and Gabbana ad from the Houston Chronicle. The ultra-helpful caption reads: "A fig leaf covers what we can't let you see." Score two points for working biblical references into a porn-y Dolce and Gabbana ad.

Tomorrow the dorkiest item ever winner. ENTRIES CLOSE AT MIDNIGHT TONIGHT. Deadline! And we really mean it this time, not like the five other times! Enter or rue.

Bunnyshop Will Be Back Tomorrow

After you send us your dorkiest items ever, and not until. Or tomorrow, noon, Eastern time, whichever is first. There is a Jocasi belt at stake!

Seriously, It's Like We're Trying To Give You $150

Have you entered the dorkiest thing you own contest? We hate the word "dorky." It is, in fact, quite dorky. But "gay," which was someone's nefarious suggestion, seemed a little ... potentially aggravating, and "lame" didn't do it for us either. Do you see how we're going on and on? This is because we are truly trying to just give you a Jocasi belt, for doing nothing more complicated than sending us a picture of the dorkiest thing you own, and it's kind of freaking us out. We wish someone else was having this contest, so we could win. Free: Jocasi belt. All you need to do: Send us a picture. (We will publish it, so smile nice for us. And NB you don't actually have to appear in it at all, if you're shy like that.) Deadline: Monday. Now: Go!

Designer of the Day: Serge Thoraval

What percentage of jewelry that we see is ugly? Why can't we write a sentence today? Er, anyway, the answer is something like 90%. It is all so freaking ugly. That is why we totally pee (much like Fergie, have you seen this photo, that we're still amazed by, from our brilliant commentor Abby?) over Serge Thoraval. Partly it is because the bio on his website is written in nicely broken English:

Serge THORAVAL is born in Paris, at the bottom of the stairs of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre; as a young boy, he wants to be an engineer and spends hours on detailed drafts of a car, moved by elastic bands.

That's all verbatim, and it's genius. But mostly it's because he makes such beautiful things, like bangles with little pretentious lines of philosophy and literature on them. But that's okay; sometimes pretension is fine.


He has a shop in Tokyo that, hmm, we might not get to for a little while. We saw them at a shop called Aime in London, with all these nasty shop girls saying nasty things about us in French. Precisely, "She has been here for 20 minutes; I want to go home." Nevermind it was like 3:30 on a sunny spring afternoon. You know, stereotypes suck, unless they are the ones about how Americans don't know any foreign languages, but you do, and you can understand everything everyone is saying about you.


If you are neither in London nor Tokyo, you can also find them at Destination at 32-36 Little West 12th Street in Manhattan or, if you're in L.A., ah, too bad about that. But you can still find them at Debout Shoes, 13023 Ventura Blvd, which is apparently somewhere in southern California.

Coming Soon: Our Stockholm Shopping Tour, Featuring...

Because we still can't make Audioblogger work, we'll left to preview our Swedish shopping extravaganza, featuring our favorite shopping in Stockholm. PS: Don't buy Havaianas in Sweden. They don't know how to spell them, and they cost too much.

Spotted: The Global Fashion Test

From Stockholm, where we learn how to dress like a Swedish hipster. We would like to say here that Sweden was delightful, and if we could forever live in one of their hostels, we would.

Step 1: Furry hat. Conveniently, these are everywhere right now, due to that whole bizarre Russian thing.
Step 2: Vintage bag. Easy enough.
Step 3: Mini skirt over shorts. This is like if you were writing a recipe for hell for anyone other than model-ish Swedish girl with skinny legs.
Step 4: Cowboy boots over tights. Again, you might as well just hand these out with Prozac for people other than our healthily waifish Scandinavian friends.

We would like to add here that this is the most stalkerish thing we have ever done, running after these people to take these picture. Which accounts for the blurriness if not the psychosis.

Fucking Blogger

So we just realized we've inadvertently erased every single comment ever made on bunnyshop. This is even more annoying than it would normally be, because all these comments have popped up defending American Apparel's Dov Charney against our "perv" label. NB: "Perv" is not a pejorative. Some of our best friends are ridiculous pervs. Like, we'll be at a French restaurant, with a hot French waitress, and someone will start talking about how he'd like to have a "trio" with her, believing that if he said "menage" she'd know what he meant. (But not if he said "trio," because multilingual French waitresses sure wouldn't know that word.) So when we say he might be the "perviest guy in the fashion industry," this is not necessarily an insult. Hey, consenting adults and all that. We still think the teen-porn short shots are a little much, and we're not entirely sure we're sending our resume to American Apparel, but as for us being "repressed puritans" here at BS, dude, our boyfriend's a Calvinist. Of course we're repressed puritans. Now, repressed puritans and the pervs of the world, hold hands. Very good.

The Us Weekly Home Companion, Part 1

This has got to be the most ridiculous, derivative thing we've ever done, but part of us really likes calling the audioblogger number and just rambling on about how crap Jessica Simpson is.

P.S. Audioblogger has destroyed part 2, but as soon as they get their act together, we'll finish up here.

Not To Be All Repetitive

But have you entered our new contest? Did we mention that the prize is worth over 100 American dollars? And perhaps 140 Canadian dollars?

Okay, honestly, no idea what the exchange rate is there, but you get the point.

Studded Belt > Kate Hudson

Skeleton Key: not a terrific movie. Not as bad as it could have been. Not as good as it would have been if we hadn't spent Friday evening sitting next to a crazy woman, who did that whole little dance crazy women do before sitting down to enjoy a Kate Hudson supernatural thriller. We were a little concerned that she might smell a little off, to be honest, but she smelled like roses. We don't know what she was eating, but it was immense. Peanuts? Rocks? No idea. But she smelled like roses, and that's good enough for us.

The best thing, bar none, about this film, was Kate Hudson's studded belt. (Not visible in this image, or any of the nine million other shots of her in her panties.) Really, the belt should be out there doing PR, because it deserves some sort of award. Not the kind of horrible three-inch-wide Sienna Miller belt, but one of the ones that actually fit through belt loops.


Of course. the easiest way to do this would just be to buy one from the Hollywood Trading Company. The only problem with HTC is that they are so freaking expensive. It's like, hmm, groceries for a month, or belt. But the thing is, how many times have we bought healthy groceries and then completely forgotten about them? And then one month later, it's like, why did we buy these stupid blueberries, when all they were going to do is sit in the fridge and get nasty-mold on them? Stupid blueberries. So maybe belt is best. Above, two HTC belts: the brown, nicer one is $196 and the black, not as nice one is $230.


And growing up, we always thought Coach was so gross, mostly because all the aggravating rich girls at our school had one — which now sounds so ridiculous we can hardly believe it. We do like their sunglasses and other non-handbag accessories now, a conversion we're sure Coach is wildy excited about. Coach studded belt, $168


And one from Lucky. At least this one's a reasonable price ($48). Seriously, there's something so naff about spending loads of money on a studded belt, with its vintage and \ or rock 'n' roll [ahem] connotations. It's like buying those $400 "distressed" jeans with little paint smears on them, just like real artists have(!). So if we're going to be posers, we'd at least like to reduce our cash investment. The mother of pearl studded belt, $48

Re: Planes Fucking Up Our Face

True: Whenever we fly now — which is something we do fairly frequently, given the boyfriend who, aggravatingly, lives 4,000 miles — a distance also measured in terms of one disgusting meal, one viewing of the cinematic delight that is National Treasure, and a screaming toddler — away (he loves it when we say how much we hate babies), we avoid looking in the mirror, at all costs, because staring back at us is quite possibly the person we will be (when not on planes) in 30 or 40 years: a terrifying witch who bakes children in ovens. Not even a good witch, who can do magic, but a neighborhood drunk with one tooth. Possibly we exacerbate this problem by buying and then drinking three or four bottles of Diet Coke during the flight instead of water and saying things like "We can just go straight from the party to the airport, that's an awesome idea," and then arriving at Newark Airport at 4 in the morning for a ten o'clock flight.

Now Fresh is selling an "In-Flight Kit" for $130, and it includes extra gentle cleansing towelettes with lotus and pomegranate (presumably for wiping chicken lasagne off your fingers), an in-flight mask with moringa, whatever that is, and a post-flight serum with green coffee. Seriously, at a certain point, do cosmetics companies just start making shit up? What the fuck is green coffee? Anyway, we're not entirely convinced that wearing a mask on an airplane is socially acceptable, because it's so clearly Ab Fab satire. But also hate deboarding plane looking like own grandmother, only with worse mid-brow furrow. Would be interested in $1.30 solution involving over-the-counter painkillers or fruit, rather than $130 "green coffee" etc. Dilemma.

The New Bunnyshop Contest: The Dorkiest Thing You Own

This is a green H&M bag with pins on it. This is the dorkiest thing we own. Now, we know, we have been seeing pins on hipsters from Williamsburg to Bethnal Green, there's this kind of thing going on with pins, but these are not those pins. These pins commeremorate places we've been, like Vermont and Blenheim Palace. The only other person we've seen with one of these pin collections was a biker mom at the Grand Canyon with pins all over the back of her denim jacket. You think this would be enough to scare us off the commemorative pins thing, but we just can't say no. We find ourselves walking into gas stations in different states, prowling the shop area, just looking for more pins. It's a disorder.


This brings us to the contest: We submit that it is possible (just) that someone else owns something dorkier than this bag. If you have photographic evidence of this, send it to us. The only rule is that you must already own it (it can't be the dorkiest thing at, like, Old Navy; that would go on for ages) and you must actually, occasionally wear it (the judges will be the final ... judges of that.) And there is actually a real-life prize, that we will mail to you, if you win, and it is a super freaking good prize: a Jocasi belt!


We can't believe it either. Last entries, August 22. Which gives you a week. Prize! Yay!

Possibly The Ugliest Thing We've Ever Seen

Dear Banana Republic: You used to make things we wanted to buy. Now you don't. This looks like the wardrobe for some 19th-century mystery: Who stole Miss Marple's hat? There's nothing to like about it: the boots and cropped trousers combo makes us look like we have leather dinosaur legs, and the three-quarter bell sleeves on the coat, with the extra-wide belt ... blergh. Plus the bag looks like a crappy Jocasi rip-off. Please. Fix. We are Luxe Card members, and we demand action.

Skinny, Skinny, Skinny Jeans

Those are some pretty high-waisted jeans, huh? They're almost so high-waisted they're stealthily trendy again, but not really. Not at all. High waists, big hips, ankle-length and then tapered. Maybe they're the hideous reverse fit from the Gap, which almost singlehandedly ruined our high school experience.

Which is just to say that at one point in 1994 these jeans were sufficiently popular and acceptable-looking that Hollywood producers allowed them to be shown on the poster for their movie. This is despite their now-obvious hideousness.


This brings us to our new fall jeans, which are not really so dissimilar from the T&L jeans, but with a lower waist and a longer leg. These jeans really aren't so much about looking good — it's more like wearing a t-shirt that says "I'm skinny" or "I have an eating disorder," but in jean form. Or "I'm a mannequin," like with that first pair, from Seven for All Mankind, $165


We're not sure if the angle on this photo is totally weird or if these jeans require legs that form bizarre v-shapes. Earnest Sewn Dark Wash Cigarette Denim, $199


At least these jeans from shopbop.com are being modeled by a human. They're really just denim leggings. We love how the bunching by the knees is totally unavoidable. Miss Sixty's J Lot Lowrise Skinny Jean, $149


Sometimes it can be painful when Banana Republic does super-trendy, but these are okay. Observe: the model appears to have a thigh, but they are still very skinny at the bottom. This is either the best of both worlds, or a recipe for absolute disaster. Skinny selvage premium jeans, $148


These also look a teensy, tiny bit more forgiving. Not sure if we totally love the patchwork-aspect to the front pockets. Rogan Medium Wash Devastete Tapered Denim, $265

A Brief Bunnyshop Referendum

Okay, like maybe two, or one, of you reading this will have an opinion, but we here at Bunnyshop have a question. Occasionally, people come by here just long enough to leave a solicitation for their own products and services (see the comment in the Hamptons post, below), sort of like dropping doo-doo off on your neighbor's doorstep. Now, we are a bit flummuxed by this, because we definitely do think the BS audience is of exceptionally high quality, and leaves exceptionally nice, on-topic comments. The comment below had nothing to do with the Jitney, or La Fondita, or anything else remotely related to the Hamptons. Which is a little annoying, because magically, everyone else remotely related to this site has only ever managed to leave comments that had something to do with issues other than attracting customers to their site. Even if they had said, "Why not come here and buy these [for example] Hamptons-related things at our store?" Yeah, that maybe wouldn't have been so annoying. So we leave it to you. Three choices:

1. Bunnyshop should leave even totally flagrant, off-topic advertising on the site
2. Bunnyshop should leave advertising on the site, provided it is witty and on-topic
3. Bunnyshop should immediately strike down any hint of advertising from these previously virginal pages (er, except for those Google ads on the left, which are singlehandedly feeding BS and her family of three foster children and five Angelina Jolie-style refugee adoptions).

Please advise, either in comment, e-mail, or handy poll form.

What We Need To Go To The Hamptons

This is in addition to the extra-large bottle of Advil to deal with all the people who pay more in taxes than we earn in three years. And they say that, to the guy who works at the bagel store: "I pay more in taxes than that guy makes in three years." We hate those guys, those terrible old men and their convertibles and their trophy wives in their "J'Adore Dior" t-shirts. Barf. Why are they always, always yelling? But we love the rest of the Hamptons. Beaches! And thanks to a very good friend of ours, who lucked out in the boyfriend lottery, a bed to sleep in very close to the beach. We are sure that if we stay there long enough, we'll run into some old man who'd rather just give us his old Volvo than go through the hassle of selling it. We actually thought about putting an ad in the East Hampton Star, just begging for a car. Stranger things have happened, right? We've read about it in Readers Digest.

On the other hand, we hate people who complain about going to the Hamptons because, Jesus, it's not exactly ... er, somewhere really shitty. We want to say Camden, but if we lived in Camden we'd be pissed about that, and besides, there are probably some nice people in Camden. We know! It's not exactly L.A.


Moving on: Our favorite store in the Hamptons is the farmer's market in Amagansett, where we buy grape soda and spaghetti. They don't have a website. Our other favorite store is Bookhampton. The yelling old men are always, always at Bookhampton, but everyone else (except the trophy wives) seem nice. Recently we bought "A Carnivore's Inquiry" and "We Need to Talk About Kevin" there, and these books, especially the second, completely fucked us up. We would look up from this book, "We Need etc," and just be so glad that we were — like when you wake up from a nightmare. But we were awake when this was going on, which should give you an idea of how absolutely fucking terrifying it is. In fact, we will admit that this book fucked us up so badly that we ended up defending it in a bizarre, circuitous, five-star review on amazon.com. Normally we would link to these two books on Amazon or bn.com, but given the indie bookstore-ness of it, that seems just wrong. 20 Main Street, 631.324.6202.

Appropriately positioned on the corner of Newtown and Main, Calypso has absolutely got to be the epitome of Hamptons shopping. You know why we're buying bikinis now? Because they're all on sale. And because we're moving to Australia. We are not dealing with another one of these motherfucking New York winters. And that curse was totally justified. Left, the Plaisance Bikini ($45) and then the Happy Summer (also $45). Calypso is also tunic — er, "kurta" — central, but we're so over them, we can't even get into it. Unless you've got a clothes pin cinching it in the back, it just looks like a cotton garbage bag. One Main Street, 631.324.7646


Oh, we don't care how bourgeois it is, we are fools for Theory. Left, the Keilly Element down-filled jacket ($340) and right, the Lennie Tubular tank ($90). Why that costs $90 we can't say. 46 Newtown Lane, 631.324.3285


Scoop Beach. Maybe they just should it called it "Tunics R Us" this summer. When we look especially poor, we like to go in there and just spend three or four hours trying on different pairs of jeans. This makes the sales staff really, really happy. We should have a flash mob at Scoop, and all request, say, some 25-waist Kellies from "Paper Denim." 47-51 Newtown Lane, 631.329.8080

A Bunnyshop Experiment: The Us Weekly Home Companion

As if to prove how absolutely, positively irrelevant we could possibly be, we welcome you to what was supposed to be our cutting-edge new thing, where we share our weekly Us Weekly experience with our BS friends: The Us Weekly Home Companion. Audio! Fucking audio! We can't believe it, either. We were so freaking excited about audioblogger. Then we couldn't figure out how to make it work for like two weeks. Then we found ourselves in a place where there appeared to be no Us Weeklys (as incredible as that seemed), the result of a faraway family birthday, and we went to a store where English was not the native language (realizing that this in no way distinguishes this store from any of the magazine stores in Park Slope) and said, in our nicest Gore-supporter voice: "Do you have the new issue of an American magazine called Us Weekly?" "No, no, no. But let me ask someone else." And he does, this friendly person. His friendly friend says, "No, no, no. But let me ask someone else." And he does, and that person says, "Us Weekly? No, no, no. Wait. You mean, U.S. Weekly?" And we said, "That is absolutely right." Unfortunately, that issue was four weeks old, this bizarre Us Weekly trip into the past befor Denise Richards and Charlie Sheen were (allegedly) back together. So: We have proven our inability to cooperate in cultures outside our own, and our insistence on publishing outdated ideas. But now, we welcome you to the Us Weekly Home Companion. Do you still have the August 8 issue with Angelina Jolie on the cover? Then sit back, relax and let's be bitchy together. Just hit play on the audio files below (we think they'll be below). We had to do it in two parts. Technology. Difficult.

The Us Weekly Home Companion, Part 1

The Us Weekly Home Companion, Part 2

Bath and Body Works Redux

We know we were just ragging on them for their totally lazy product design —

Okay: We were right in the middle of writing that sentence, when we went to the Bath and Body Works website to pull off an image of their Iced Vanilla Vodka Classic Filled Candle ($19.50), which we are pretty sure is the fragrance that led us, like sirens, to the store from literally across the mall, it smelled so delicious. Like heaven. In mall form. We need to share it, because it was ... sublime. And even though we think their packaging is a little familiar, we truly do like and enjoy many of their products.

So anyway, we're paging through all their candles for this posting, when we saw these candles:


Which remind us of another line of candles. Would anyone like to guess what they're called? Sort of like the way their True Blue line looks a little like Bliss? In fact, we are totally serious, we will buy a tube of Great Lash mascara for the first person who leaves a comment with the name of the candles these remind us of. Just so we know we're not crazy. Anyway, Birch Henry Bendel NY filled candles, $26. Blerg blerg blerg. Now ... comment and win!

We love contests. XO BS

The Most Pathetic Things We've Ever Realized About Ourselves

We read Lucky magazine with a pen in our hands, and we rip out key pages, and we make little notes in our fashion notebook for future ideas or shopping or whatever. We did not study math, or French, or our cell phone contract as closely as we study Lucky, which is why we have trouble with fractions, can't order frites at McDonald's without the obligatory parlez-vous etc, and have a cell plan with 20 minutes a month. Pathetic.

Christina Aguilera for Skechers

So there we were at the mall this weekend, innocently wandering between Kohl's and H&M, looking for a bottle of Diet Coke, when we were affronted — and affronted is the right word, sort of like psychologically smacked in the face — by this ad for Skecher's starring Christina Aguilera. Full disclosure: We like that Dirrty song. However: We did not like this ad. In fact, this ad will ensure that we never, ever buy Skecher's footwear, if only to completely block out the image of Christina Aguilera bent over a car like she's about to be (a) arrested or (b) impregnated.

A Dukes of Hazzard Tribute to Cut-Off Jeans

Note we said "cut-offs" and not "Daisy Dukes." Isn't that a hip hop song? We have no idea. And we also don't want to discuss our tribute to anything remotely involving the exercise in porn-centric capitalism that is Jessica Simpson's career. But we. Can't. Help. It. We may be at the movies on Friday night, and it is remotely, remotely possible that we might pay for a ticket for The Dukes of Hazzard. Okay, in fact, it is slightly more possible than our spending the evening on hold with our student loan lender, or preparing our 2005 taxes. The problem is that when we were five years old, we would devise strategies whereby we might meet and marry Bo Duke, and this may be sufficient for spending our night with Jessica Simpson and her shorts.


Now, obviously, the best cut-offs are, like, actually cut off, most preferably from Levi's, which we hereby deem to be the most American of all denim brands, and God knows there are few entertainment franchises more American than the Dukes of Hazzard. Er, nevermind that these Superlow Boot Cut 518s are imported from Poland or something. $48


These Chip and Pepper cut-offs are possibly prophetically called "Sex with the X." In case you were wondering how porn-y denim product names could be. Er, they could be a lot worse, but still. We're thinking our ex-roommates, who collected porn, could suggest plenty of things, but we're not going to suggest them here, Bunnyshop being rated R for language but not sex or violence. $143


True Religion jeans are (a) adorable and (b) way too expensive. Okay, they're only $7 more than the Chip and Peppers, but still. These are conveniently called Daisy Duke, which is so staggeringly derivative that it almost makes us wish they were called "XXX" or "Buy These Shorts and Random Guys Will Want to Sleep With You" or more to the point "Buy These Shorts and Hot Guys Will Fall in Love With You and Buy You All Kinds of Stuff." But ... those over-large pockets are excellent for disguising over-large asses. $150


Our last high-priced denim option, from Paper Denim etc. From the shopbop.com write-up: "Yes, Jessica Simpson has a starring movie role, the perfect husband, and her own reality series." We seriously stopped reading at "perfect husband." Pardon? Nick Lachey is the perfect husband? Yeah, when we were little, we always dreamed of being swept off our feet by a member of a boy band. Who was attracted to girls who made a career out of confusing different animals. Ah, chicken, tuna, dogs, scallops ... they're all so hairy and different and shit. $96.60

Now, God knows we hate spending more than ... more than free on anything, including jean shorts, which have a perilously low cash-to-material ratio. Or, er, high. The one that sucks. So we looked far, far, far and wide for suitable low-budget options, and we found only one suitable pair, from alloy.com, where, we are terrified to announce, we once paid to fabricate the horoscopes. But their clothes are generally cheap and acceptable, like these jean shorts. See, the problem with every pair of cheap jean shorts we found was that they were, crucially, not cut-offs. They were either hemmed like normal, or cuffed like here. What's with that? Does the cutting-off process cost so much? Could it cost $100 per pair? Unbelievably confusing. Jessica Simpson, we are sure, could mull over this for days without an answer. In fact, to be fair, there may not be an answer.


Anyway: cheap version, alloy.com. Sorry the picture's so small, but it's not our fault. The real tragedy, in any case, is that these only cost $25.60 — unless you're over size 15, in which case they cost $27.20. Did they really need to make size 15+ people feel shitty for a grand total of $1.60? Just wondering. In fact, feel free to use that as a reason not to buy them.

Our Favorite Fall Trends: Green Leather Bags

Well, that's sort of a micro-trend, possibly, but green leather bags are all we're dreaming about as far as our autumn handbags are concerned. Like this gorgeous one from Urban Outfitters. Green: the new neutral. Green: the navy blue of New York City. We're going to keep working with this, but until we figure that out, here is a selection of delightful green bags, including Urban's cracked leather pocket bag, $78


Oh, there's no point denying it: We get that fluttery, lovelorn feeling in our stomach every time we see this bag. Horrifying (us). But beautiful (it). The Blake leather tote, $975


Luella is like our back-up Marc Jacobs crush: When MJ doesn't pay attention to us in art class, we start looking at Luella a little more kindly. Then she raised her prices and pissed us off, and we're suddenly madly in love with both of them, which is so annoying and typical. The Luella Kelsey leather bag, $895.


The word "skulk" is defined in dictionary.com as "to move about stealthily." This is what we do in Mulberry stores. Honestly, it's a little embarrassing. It's not like we're lookingto steal. It's more that we're always dressed so casually and they think we're about to shoplift, and because we know that they think this, we end up acting, as well as looking like criminals. Sigh. The Blenheim Antique Glace Leather bag, $795


This Anthropologie bag is the essence of boho chic, which we have decided means anything that looks like it cost $3 and actually costs lots and lots more. Here, to be specific, $248. This is because the picture looks like green canvas, but it's actually leather. Which, when you think about it, is a stealthy way of carrying around an expensive accessory, sort of like wearing diamond earrings with messy hair and leopard leggings.

Bath and Body Works and a Love of Packaging

Packaging. It must be really, really hard to think of new packaging ideas. We can't even come up with an answer for the perplexing question of what color to paint our walls, a topic which we started considering four years ago. They are still white. We are still failures. (Er, especially at scaling images, apparently.) Back to packaging: We love Bath & Body Works. They make excellent candles, and they once, but no longer, produced the best skin-care line we've ever used. All we're saying is that we noticed some similarities. Like between the new C.O. Bigelow deluxe facial moisturizer ($32) and, say, anything from Kiehl's, including their Creme de Corps ($15). Not that we noticed.


Or maybe Le Couvent des Minimes Honey & Shea Repairing Hand Cream ($21) and L'Occitane's similarly Provence-themed Shea Butter Hand Cream ($23). Actually, we kind of like the Bath & Body Works version a little bit better.


All we're saying is that on first glance, we were like, "They're selling Bliss here?" But they're not. They're selling True Blue Spa. Not the same thing. Plum Plum Body Butter ($32): Not so dissimilar from Grin & Bare It Body Lotion ($15), hmm? But at half the price, we might not give a shit. We're mercenaries at heart, as any of our ex-boyfriends could attest.