By Sara Becker
April 23, 2012

You may think this is childish but I ask you, what’s better than going to a dance party in a fashionable outfit that also happens to glow in the dark? I didn’t say the words “date” or “bar,” I said “dance party.” Though I imagine going to a bar in a glow in the dark outfit would ensure that you would either always get the bartender’s attention or that they would refuse to serve you. And who knows, going on a date while glowing may ensure you meet your rave-soulmate.

After Hudson launched their pinstriped phosphorescent jeans I thought my dream had faded. I’d hoped that the jeans would be 100% phosphorescent and that upon hitting the dance floor in said pants, I would instantly transform it into the ultimate dance party. Sadly, the only bit on the Hudson jeans that glows are stripes along their sides, which, for me, just feels like a sad pinstripe copout. They also make me think of tracksuits, really expensive tracksuits.

I thought the time for glow in the dark clothing had passed until I found this Urban Outfitters’ Cooperative glow in the dark pineapple dress. The folks on Refinery 29 pose the question as to whether or not the dress is “rad or bad.” The natural answer has to be that it’s both. We all know, even me, that glow in the dark clothing is tacky and ridiculous but it is also so much fun to wear. The only suggestion I have regarding the best way to wear a glow in the dark pineapple dress is to rock the shit out of it. (Pardon the language but there’s really no other way to convey this point). You cannot go out at night looking like a glow stick unless your confidence level is teetering somewhere in the stratosphere.

If you’re curious if there are more expensive glow in the dark options, say one you could wear to your next gala, look no further. Last year Halston designed a glow in the dark one shouldered sequined dress. I’ll leave this last piece up to you as I’m not entirely sure how I feel about it. Thoughts?

By Sara Becker
April 16, 2012

The wee hours of yesterday morning marked the hundredth anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. Even though knowledge of the Titanic is something I’m sure we all grew up with, it’s still strange to think of the event as having occurred a century ago. With all of the articles written about it and a certain attractive actor attached to the film, the event has always felt culturally closer than it actually was (in a temporal sense).  We know about the icebergs, the binoculars, the miscommunication on the bridge of the ship and now about how strange tides could have played an even bigger role in the sinking than previously thought.

In an unlikely turn of events, a piece of fashion has survived despite an untimely underwater burial. Explorer, Robert Ballard (the man responsible for discovering Titanic’s remains in 1985) discovered a pair of leather shoes near the stern of the ship.  Something about the tannins in the leather has preserved them on the deck of the aging ship. The owner of the shoes has long since decomposed but there’s something weirdly poetic and a little bit comforting about the shoes. Seeing them makes me think more specifically about the people on board the ship and their voyage as humans rather than about the enormity of the accident.

Strangely, this is not the first incident of shoes being preserved at sea. In 1990, 60,000 Nikes fell off a cargo ship in the northeastern Pacific and made their way on the currents to British Columbia. They washed up on the shore six months after they jumped ship and were in such good shape that beachgoers took the time to find matching pairs.

So perhaps, next time you set out to sea, it would be wise to bring along a nice pair of heels. That way, if the worst should happen, at least the world will get a glimpse of the person you once were. On a lighter note, you could also put a message in your shoe, it seems like a message in a shoe might have a better chance of survival than a message in a bottle. Naturally there’s a watertight issue but a shoe is less likely to smash open against rocks.

By Sara Becker
April 9, 2012

Don Cherry

The only way to break this one down is to start with the basics. We know for certain that men wear suits. We also know that men are somewhat restricted, or feel more restricted than women in terms of their wardrobe options. We also know that the fashion industry has this magic invention called the stylist and that stylists are often times employed by TV networks to ensure that newscasters, game show hosts and soap opera stars look amazing for their viewers.

Let’s narrow it down. I want to talk specifically about sportscasters. Ok. Sportscasters are generally former professional athletes who now get paid truckloads of money to sit at news desks in swivelly office chairs and argue with each other about sports in front of millions of people. Having established all of this and knowing that these are generally former athletes, wouldn’t it seem rational for them to wear athletic gear? If they were in tennies, sweat bands and basketball shorts I might be horrified but at least I wouldn’t be confused. How do they so often end up looking like pimps? If they didn’t have to wear suits then maybe they could talk about sports while actually playing sports. You know, maybe they could play a little HORSE while drinking beer and talking about the game.

And if the pimp suits are here to stay then at the very least, Don Cherry and Craig Sager should have a pimp suit throw down. Who would win? If they had to play a sport against each other in their finest suits would they play hockey, basketball or maybe something totally unrelated, like water polo (yes, in their suits).

Craig Sager

*It’s worth noting that there are women sportscasters and somehow, by some divine miracle, those women tend to look relatively normal in their journalist outfits. Why is that? I’ll leave that one up to you to decipher.

By Sogol Motiey

Since the beginning of 2009, designers have been collaborating with retail stores to bring their designs into a more affordable and expansive market.  And now, everyone is collaborating with everyone!  Usually when a major retailer partners with a well-known designer to launch a new collection, the results are affordable clothes that people can actually wear or more scaled-down versions of a designers main, more expensive, line.

Stores like H&M, GAP and Target have done collaborations by releasing them to the public one at a time, however, Anthropologie is debuting 11 of them at once through a new online platform called Made in Kind, which will go live…TODAY!

In a release, Anthropologie says Made In Kind will function as a gallery “housing multiple exhibitions per month, each dedicated to a single designer or concept.”

The debut collaborators include Karen Walker, Gregory Parkinson, John Patrick, Samantha Pleet and some lesser known names like Charlotte Linton, Pipit, Rachel Rose and British brand Place Nationale.

Read more here.

By Sara Becker
April 2, 2012

Late Friday night I found myself at an after party in San Diego completely mesmerized by a chair. (It’s worth noting that regardless of cocktail intake, I would have been enthralled all the same). The chair looked strangely like an accordion or an Elizabethan ruff (also known as a collar) and given that it was the direct follow up to a dance off and a sideways game of pool, it had a lot to live up to in terms of entertainment.

It looked like it was made of hundreds of pieces of cardboard all slatted together into an accordion. When un-stretched, it sat in the shape of an “L” with wooden supports on its sides. This is where the mind blowing began; the chair could be transformed into a love seat, a round bench or an extremely long bench that could easily seat up to 16 people. The whole piece was flexible and could bend or curve at will. It was incredible looking. It was beautiful and felt like something I’d hope to sit on at the MOMA while eating a tiny cake and sipping a four dollar coffee.

The chair is called The FlexibleLove Chair and it’s made almost entirely out of recycled paper and recycled wood waste. It was designed by Chinese furniture designer, Chishen Chiu and from the research I did online it looks like they range from $300 to $700 dollars, which, for a badass, multipurpose, environmentally friendly, stylish chair, doesn’t seem so bad.

If you don’t feel like dropping a few hundred dollars on a new piece of furniture, maybe you can make yourself a nice ruff. The ruff came about in the late 1500’s and was simply a starched and folded ruffle. In 1565 a few ladies gave Queen Elizabeth a ruff for NYE and the ruff trend went wild. They were often times dyed and built to enormous sizes (over a foot wide). Interestingly, about a century after their invention, the ruff was banned by Philip IV of Spain. The ruff also happened to inspire the sad little cones that veterinarians wrap around dogs’ heads. Somehow the cones don’t look nearly as interesting on puppies as they did on Queen Elizabeth, poor dogs.