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November Gift With Purchase: Painterly Lady Trina Turk Gives Clinique Some Color

Posted on November 20, 2008 | Leave a comment
Colorful and Chic

Colorful and Chic

Fashion designer Trina Turk is known first and foremost in my mind for her kaleidoscopic colors and prints. Hues like pinkish buff, heliotrope, Wedgewood blue, and desert khaki are thrown together with Palm Beach aplomb.

This November Turk lends her sensibility to Clinique to create the brand’s first ever celebrity-designed Gift With Purchase. It’s filled with colorful and rather potent goodies. Valued at $60, you can get one of these bags with any purchase of $25 or more.

Inside the silver and white tiger print pouch, try out the Zero Gravity Repairwear Lift (moisturizer), Rinse-Off Foaming Cleanser, Color Surge Eye Shadow Duo featuring ginger and lilac colors, Soft Pressed Powder Blush in a rose color, Lash Doubling Mascara, Long Last Lipstick in beach coral, and Long Last Glosswear SPF 15.

The hits from this kit are definitely the mascara–I was told “it’s distracting”–and the Zero Gravity Repairwear, which uses a retinol/peptide complex to increase the rate of skin turnover and collagen production.

The miss would probably be the Rinse-Off Foaming Cleanser. It seems to work properly, but smells moldy.

Available at Nordstrom stores nationwide and Nordstrom.com until November 22.

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Sales This Week: Online, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Francisco

Posted on November 18, 2008 | 3 Comments

Sales this week 11/17-11/24:

ONLINE:

• Kenzo fragrances, skincare, and bodycare products are 20 percent off during their friends and family Online sale. Shop at kenzousa.com with the code 08FAMILY. Through 11/24.

• Christian Lacroix tops start at $250 and pants start at $190 during Editor’s Closet’s Online sale. If you’re not a member, click here. Plus, use the coupon code “NYMAGCL” and receive a $50 credit. Through 11/19.

botanistjpeg*Botanist eco-friendly benches and nesting tables raise funds and awareness for charitable organizations worldwide.
Save 20% – Order online by Dec 1st
Enter code: BOTDEC1
www.orange22.com

LOS ANGELES:

11/20/08-11/21/08

samplesales

11/17-11/30

Traffic

The famous high end boutique, TRAFFIC, is having their winter sale at their Beverly Center and Sunset Plaza locations. Find labels like, Paul Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Kooba Bags, See by Chloe, Twelfth Street by Cynthia Vincent, Philosophy, 3.1, Alexander Wang, Rozae Nichols, Mike & Chris, Ella Moss, Issa London, Paige Jeans, Citizens of Humanity, Anlo, and many more all at up to 60% off. (Beverly Center)
Mon-Fri 10am-9pm
Sat 10am-8pm
Sun 11am-6pm
Location: 8620 Sunset Blvd
(Sunset Plaza)
West Hollywood, CA 90069
(310) 657-5469

8500 Beverly Blvd.
(Beverly Center)
6th Floor
Los Angeles, CA 90048
(310) 659-3438

11/22

Laurie Frank’s Holiday Bazaar

Laurie Frank, of the gallery Frank Pictures at the Bergamot complex in Santa Monica, will host her first Holiday Bazaar on Saturday November 22 from 1:30 to 6:30.

The vendors include:

I Profumi di Firenze – 16th century fragrances handmade with all-natural ingredients from Florence, Italy

Om Living Home and Clothing from India

Nathalie Seaver Jewelry Delicate and timeless cocktail rings, earrings and necklaces

PricillaWoolworth.com An eco General Store from the scion of the family that created the concept

Room 222 Stylists and designers best kept secret for tightly edited vintage clothing and accessories

Tysa Designs Quintessential California chic meant to be dressed up or down

Frank Pictures Gallery
Bergamot Station GALLERY A-5
2525 Michigan Avenue
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Gallery phone: 310-828-0211
www.frankpicturesgallery.com

ORANGE COUNTY

11/22-11/23

TWS-Citizens Of Humanity Sample Sale

For two days only, shop the first ever Citizens of Humanity Sample Sale in Orange County. Find more than 15,000 items for both gals and guys. Save up to 80% off on denims, tops, jackets, maternity jeans, and more. All sizes on first quality excess inventories, samples, and, irregulars. Community dressing room available.

To RSVP go to www.thewarehousesale.com

San Francisco

11/22/2008

FabFashionista – BCBG & Ellas Moss Sample Sale

Shop over 2,000 dresses, tops, hoodies, bags, and more from your favorite designers such as BCBG, Ella Moss, and Splendid. Find all sizes 0-12, in most styles, including fabulous cocktail dresses. Get some retail therapy for one day only and receive up to 70% off everything!

At Marina Boulevard and Buchanan Street
Fort Mason Center
Building A (Golden Gate Room)
San Francisco, CA 94123

Bloomingdale’s – Holiday 2008 Fragrance Fair 11/21-11/22

Don’t miss this fragrance event at Bloomingdale’s, where you sniff and sample to your heart’s content. Expect giveaways, bottle engraving, expert advice, and lots and lots of powerful scents! Spend $100 or more in fragrance and you’ll score a Bloomingdale’s umbrella as a gift (while supplies last).
By appointment
845 Market Street
Bloomingdale’s
San Francisco, CA 94103
(415) 856-5759

LA and SF

From Kalla: Brit designer Karen Millen at 8500 Beverly Blvd in LA and 845 Market in San Francisco is also on sale! Various items up to 70% off, plus 25% off all full price coats and knitwear for the next week.

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Lyric Rain by Strange Invisible Perfumes

Posted on November 14, 2008 | Leave a comment
Lyricrain

Lyric Rain by Strange Invisible Perfumes

Before I give my review, an important disclaimer: I’ve got a small problem with patchouli. Frankly, the scent gives me a headache and reminds me of my high school years when I made vintage shopping trips to the Haight-Ashbury district with my mother. She hates the scent so much that if we went to a store that smelled of the herb, she would wait outside. I also got into trouble when I bought a few patchouli incense sticks and burned them in my bedroom…ah, the teenage years.

I do think that patchouli in small quantities can be a lovely complement to any scent. Jubilation 25 by Amouage mixes rose and patchouli to produce one of the most exotic scents on the market. If I had $265 to burn I would buy a bottle of J25 any day.

Lyric Rain, $185, by Strange Invisible Perfumes, smells overwhelmingly of patchouli. If that’s your bag, come on down. Other notes are jasmine, pink pepper, blue lotus, and lavender. As the drydown progresses, the scent evolves into something much more suble and floral. Lavender, one of my favorite notes, is extremely subtle in this perfume.

Buy it here if you dare!

The Strange Invisible Perfumes line started 2000 by L.A. native Alexandra Balahoutis. Her impeccably designed boutique in Venice came later. After living in Prague, Paris and Manhattan, Balahoutis decided to create botanical perfumes that reflect her worldy experiences. If I had to guess her strongest geographic influence, I would go with Prague. Her scents seem to evoke the old world of Franz Kafka, Antonin Devorak and Jaroslav Seifert. Also, there used to be a fantastic botanical store in Prague that was choc full of plant-based beauty products. They had everything: shampoo, skincare, perfume, etc. I can’t remember the name of it or if it still exists. Does anyone know it?

All of Balahoutis’ perfumes are made from the cultivation and distillation of flowers, plants, and resins to create natural oils. She also shuns any synthetic chemicals and argues that only natural essences unlock the olfactory nerve receptors to affect the lymbic system and release chemicals such as serotonin and endorphins. She says that the synthetic aroma molecules (stereo-isomers) cannot be recognized by the brain and adds that some scents are suspected of accumulating in human tissue causing liver damage and cancer. Scary.

Balahoutis also creates custom perfumes. I’ve heard that her signature scents can cost $1,000 dollars.

“Perfume is about association. A beautiful aromatic composition empowers us to access our most delightful notions, ideas, and fantasies, lending thought the physical reinforcement and visceral sensation needed to become experience.” –Alexandra Balahoutis

Stylechica’s free associations from Lyric Rain:

Dvorak’s Humoresque!

kafka

Franz Kafka

metamorphosis

Kafka's writing is beautifully stark.

Metamorphosis by Kafka

jaroslav

Jaroslav, one of my favorite poets.

Jaroslav Seifert

Prague, that’s a sip of wine with flavour,
a hundred times I say her name,
light as a breath and bright as flame,
and sweeter than a lover’s favour.

Yet, may the alarm sirens, please,
take off their helmets, silent, muted.
They haven’t stopped yet, they have hooted,
the sirens of our consciences.

And if I saw her, broken vessel,
glass splinters scattered far around,
and with her doom I had to wrestle,

her dust inside my mouth would sweeten,
she’s like a seal on what’s been written,
and were she levelled to the ground…

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Go Play at The High Desert Test Sites

Posted on November 8, 2008 | Leave a comment

Get in your car and hit the road. Can you smell the pavement heating up under the hot Los Angeles sun? Do you feel the dry Santa Ana winds beating against your face and hands? What are you listening to? Maybe something with a pulse like Snow Patrol or an old Serge Gainsbourg track…

Why not just keep driving? If you keep going further and further east you’ll hit an explosion of art in the high desert of Joshua Tree.

Work by Marnie Weber

Work by Marnie Webber

From Nov 7 to 9, as part of the 2008 California Biennial, you can attend the opening of the Wonder Valley Institute of Contemporary Art and view performances by the otherworldly Marnie Webber and the mystical Spirit Girls.

Organized by the Orange County Museum of Art and produced in tandem with LAXART, other artists featured include: Hannah Greely, Jonathan Hernandez, Patrick Jackson, Alice Konitz, Joel Kyack, Ann Magnuson, Thom Merrick, Yoshua Okon, Jack Pierson, Ry Rocklin, Julia Scher and Amy and Wendy Yao.

Silencer by Hannah Greely

Silencer by Hannah Greely

DIRECTIONS:

To get to HDTS from Los Angeles:
(approx. 2+ hours)
*Take the 10 east
*Drive approx 1.5 hours (to the windmill fields)
*Exit on Hwy 62 (29 Palms Hwy)
*Take 62 (29 Palms Hwy) east towards 29 Palms.
*The sites are located between Yucca Valley and Wonder Valley – An updated map will be posted before the
next event, and directions to the HDTS HQ will be listed on the home page.

This was at the bottom of the invite. Doesn’t it sound a little bit exciting?

WARNING TO ATTENDEES
The High Desert Test Sites is a multi-site event in the high desert. Attendance
is at your own risk. By attending the HDTS, you agree to assume sole responsibility

for any risk and to release anyone associated with the HDTS, the CB08, and LAXART cause while in the desert.

For more information on LAXART: www.laxart.org
For more information on High Desert Test Sites: www.highdeserttestsites.com
For more information on the Orange County Museum of Art and the 2008 California Biennial: www.ocma.net

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Jeweler Lulu Frost Headed To The West Coast This Weekend

Posted on November 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

img_2068I’m definitely a member of the “found objects” school. It’s fun to go antiquing, rummage through vintage (a nicer euphemism for “second-hand”) clothing and even better, go through your distant relative’s closets (I acquired an awesome vintage hat collection that way).

Jeweler Lisa Salzer, the force behind the line Lulu Frost, culls many of her influences from the past. Her one-of-a-kind pieces are made from objects that you might not immediately connect with jewelry. For example, she uses long-lost room numbers form the Plaza Hotel, cut-steel shoe buckles from the 1870′s, old-fashioned keys and locks, chandelier crystals and watch fobs.  Another designer who uses objects like these is the fantastic Sonia Boyajian.

Lisa comes to Fred Segal Melrose this Saturday and Sunday from noon to 6 p.m. She will be making custom pieces from her collection of unusual objects. Come by for some shopping and a chance to meet the East Coast-based designer! -Stylechica.

P.S. Sorry, I could not resist the title. Actually, I think it’s rather restrained. I almost put “Frost Forecast For The West Coast This Weekend!”

Here is the invite!

Here is the invite!

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Emergency Rodarte Sale!

Posted on November 3, 2008 | Leave a comment


Presse is selling runway Rodarte pieces on its website….I love the Rodarte girls. I wrote about them in the Los Angeles Times Magazine here…

To shop:

www.presseboutique.com

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Infusion D’homme by Prada

Posted on October 29, 2008 | Leave a comment

Miuccia Prada is one woman the art and fashion worlds love without reservation. I’m in agreement. For one, she tends to intellectualize fashion, looking at clothing as a reflection of our current definition of femininity or some other esoteric idea. Sometimes her clothes are even frumpy–the perfect anti-fashion statement. But then you slip something on and realize that Prada’s clothes are meticulous arranged, a maze of intricate seams and good design.

I don’t normally shop Prada (out of my price range), but one time I wandered into the boutique on Rodeo and tried on a black coat. While the shop girl ignored me, I nearly burst into tears in the dressing room. It was perfect, made from soft wool with puffy sleeves and a large, deep hoodie. The silhouette managed to be relaxed and sophisticated at the same time. The only problem was that it cost several months rent.

Warm citrus notes with iris and cedar!

Warm citrus notes with iris and cedar!

Anyway, last night I went to an event to commemorate the online launch of Prada’s Infusion D’Homme fragrance. As part of the launch, Prada and Max Bruch commissioned nine filmmakers in nine different countries to make short films based on Prada’s description of the ingredients that make up the perfume: Tunisian neroli, Iris, cedar, vetiver, benzoin from Laos and incense from Somalia. The scent is absolutely  brilliant. When you first smell it, it’s almost warm, the iris and the cedar are what pop. If the scent had a color, I would imagine it to be a soothing, orange-tinted yellow.

To celebrate the launch of this perfume, Prada not only commissioned these nine films, they also asked Pietro Scalia, well-known, academy-award winning film editor of JFK and Black Hawk Down (not to mention the cinematic Gladiator), to synthesize these nine films into a version of his own–pure alchemy.

Afterward Scalia talked about his creative process. The final film is blisteringly sensory, kind of like good perfume.

What I noticed most about these films was their paean to youth and the fact that they seemed to be led by emotion, not plot logic. The actors were blindingly good-looking, young, and yearning. My favorite of the nine shorts, was the film by the Cuban director Navarro. It is classic. You watch the main character bond with his grandfather and you can feel what he does when you jump into a pool or the ocean. Just watching the film made me want to run to the sea.

Check them out for yourself!

http://www.prada.com/fragrances

Click on Infusion D’Homme

Then select Videos

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Band of Outsiders

Posted on September 3, 2008 | 1 Comment

Scott Sternberg will be a mentor this year at the Otis College of Fashion and Design, which is pretty fabulous. Mentors act as creative directors for a project, then return to the class several times over the school year to critique the students’ designs. It goes without saying that the kids learn a ton from the process. I’ve observed one class taught by Diane Von Furstenberg and I have to say that it was mind-altering (and I’m not a trained fashion designer).

Sternberg is also happens to be one of my favorite men’s designers. Originally a CAA agent before he turned to fashion design, Sternberg’s line Band of Outsiders has a great west coast aesthetic (especially in his choices of fabric) that he pairs with a slimmer, more European, silhouette. The result is very chic and playful. I know the prepsters on the East Coast love his choices, but to me there is a subtle cheeky west coast thing hidden in there–very subversive and very cool.


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Audrey Tautou, ready to pout for Chanel

Posted on May 5, 2008 | 1 Comment

Priceless_070403024251119_wideweb__
I used to think that Audrey Tautou’s name was pronounced Audrey Tatoo. Alas, non, it’s "Tutu." Perhaps that’s more appropriate since she does have a rather balletic, otherworldly air about her. I really dig her bangs and the super sweet way she says "Oui" in the film Amelie. She sort of puckers up her lips and whistles as she says the word "Oui," ever so softly.

That kind of reminds me of an Italian girlfriend of mine who had the most incredible way of saying "Ciao." She would kind of sigh as she said it, and the word would start out at a high pitch before falling to a low whisper, sort of a lovely decrescendo, and then at the end of the greeting she would slump her shoulders. The boys would look at her and melt.

These sort of affectations were always so magical to me because when I’m speaking French or Italian (both languages I learned from surrogate mother figures), I’m just trying to get the word out there with some semblance of correct pronunciation and usage. The idea of using a word like a caress, a word that says five thousand things to five thousand different people, still strikes me as utter sophistication. Sometimes my Italian friend seemed vulnerable, other times excited, often bored; it was like this one beautiful note that you had to listen to very hard to figure out the real meaning.

I guess I could try saying "Thank you" or  "Excuse me" in a special mysterious way, but the thing is, it feels almost un-American to me. We just get things out there, say what we mean and be done with it.

Anyway, the reason why I decided to blog about Mademoiselle Audrey Tautou is because she’s been named the face of Chanel for the next "Advertising film," which will be directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet . From the press release, I’m left thinking that "Advertising film" must mean "TV ad," but I’m not entirely certain. The film will be released in
2009. -Stylechica

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Hello world!

Posted on February 1, 2008 | 1 Comment

Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!

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