sorry about the lack of posts in the last couple days, and also in advance for the next few days, but yesterday i flew to california (well- car, greyhound to seattle, citybus, plane and car- shuddup, it was $225 cheaper than flying non-stop from vancouver) for my brother’s wedding in san diego. went straight from the airport to a backyard party/laughathon/twin hammock relaxation amidst the candlelight on a 70 degree evening. after a morning of homebrewing and sitting in the sun listening to Caribou with my favorite brother-in-law, i’m in an excellent mood. when i’m in a mood like this, i only want to look at happy things. like giddy, fashionable couples, squinting in the lovely warm sun.
    
have a fantasmic day.
The income gap is the widest it’s been since the Depression Era. Louis Vuitton’s hideous patchwork bag is worth just under the median U.S. family income ($46,960) and was recently pre-sold out. Talk about Depression. Our Hotelier / Oil Money Socialite Daughters and Dubai princesses are are rushing to pay $40,000 for this monstrosity, which obviously will not match with their new pink ankle boots, while that same money could have fed a family of Somalian refugees for 10 years. I have a number of expletives for you, nouveau riche scum. If I see you come near me with that $357,000 pearl necklace, I’ll have no other recourse than to calmly rip it from your neck and toss its pearls post-ghost-of-christmas-future-style into a crowd of G-8 protesters.
A few comparisons that will make you feel better about not being able to drop the the equivalent of the Congo’s gross national product on a handbag:
Louis Vuitton: $40,000
or
Urban Outfitters: $48.00
Brunello Cucinelli: $1,995
or
Susiemarie: $30.00
Mara Hoffman: $286
or
Forever 21: $17.80
After all, the connection between style and and extravagant wealth is imaginary, illusory, a sham. Just because it’s expensive doesn’t mean it’s worthwhile. Quite the contrary. Thrifters, penny-pinchers, and handi-crafters of the world unite every day to create an underground economy of affordable fabulousness. Garments to clothe the nurses, hand made jewelry to make teachers beautiful, comfy cute shoes to help social workers, and hip headscarves to save the hair of the Rosie-the-riveters of today! We ARE the fashion revolution and we won’t sit back and let the upper echelon tell us that we need money to be beautiful. Blue is much prettier and unique than white anyway.
Case in point:
Hello Kitty: $1,995
or
Linda Plastaid: $29.00
So tell me everybody, which is hipper?
This:
or this:
I found this website called www.uneetee.com. They take artist’s submissions and members vote on their favorites. The winners get their art made into a T-shirt (American Apparel) and get featured for 24 hours. All shirts are less than $20 ($4.99 S&H)! They are all short runs (except for a few that get picked by the Uneetee team) so you can probably calculate the probability that you will run into someone wearing the same shirt anywhere (Geeks: these are perfect replacements for your electric sheep shirts). Here are some of my favorites:
 Artist: Tan Wei Hau
 Artist: Budi Satria Kwan
 Artist:Dina Prasetyawan
Vote for:
and
and
American Apparel shirts are so soft and comfy and they last forever. They are definitely part of my weekend uniform. I am a total sucker for unique tees because they are a way to look stylish when you feel uninspired or just lazy. And these days I feel like that a lot!
Style.com has this amazing feature called Beauty Icons, a monthly look at the faces that have made history. the most stylish, inspiring and unforgettable beauties of our time. that page is probably my most frequented part of the whole site. the chosen women are undoubtedly icons, and are in no way conventional. many have had a palpable effect on how we now perceive beauty and personal style. here are my absolute favorite photos of the entire series. click on the photos for their stories.
Amelia Earhardt
“Indeed, her slight frame and boyish crop of tousled hair led to comparisons with Charles Lindbergh—her generation’s other great pilot. But behind those goggles “Lady Lindy” was a true beauty, with silver-dollar eyes, a slender neck, and freckles scattered across a button nose.”
Björk
“Björk’s striking appearance is as singular as her sound. While her East-Asian features and face-framing jet-black hair led to taunts of “China Girl” as a child, her atypical looks are now part of her impish appeal—as is her eccentric taste in clothes. She’s famous for collaborating with fashion rule-breakers like Alexander McQueen and Jeremy Scott, and we seem to remember an incident involving the Oscars and a swan. Like we said, things haven’t been half as fun without her.”
Charlotte Casiraghi
“‘She makes me think of Brigitte Bardot,’ Karl Lagerfeld is reported to have said of Charlotte Casiraghi, the only daughter of his close friend, Princess Caroline of Monaco—and that was when Casiraghi was just eight.”
Vanessa Redgrave
“There is a quality about Vanessa that makes me feel as if she resides in a netherworld of mystery that eludes the rest of us mortals.” -Jane Fonda
Maria Felix
“She is reported to have stalked into the Paris boutique with a baby crocodile in tow and asked the stunned jewelers to replicate the reptile in gems, stipulating, no less, that the piece be done to scale… King Farouk allegedly promised her Nefertiti’s crown for one night together.”
Iekeliene Stange
“With cheekbones that could slice a seamless backdrop, a sharp exclamation point of a nose, and a strong cleft chin, there’s no ignoring Dutch newcomer Iekeliene Stange… Removing her Lucite-heeled shoes mid-catwalk at Marc didn’t hurt her recognition factor, but Stange is as striking off-runway as she is on. She regularly arrives at castings in frilly vintage frocks, lens-less glasses, and ropes of beads that pay homage to her personal style icon, Snow White.”
 
Louise Brooks
“‘There is no Garbo, there is no Dietrich, there is only Louise Brooks,’ Henri Langlois once said.”
Sophia Coppola
“‘She is young and sweet and beautiful,’ Marc Jacobs has said. ‘The epitome of this girl I fantasize of.’”
Marilyn Monroe
“Marilyn… was featured on the cover of Hugh Hefner’s very first issue of Playboy (The magazine potentate has since secured the crypt next to hers).”
Jean Seberg
“Kirsten Dunst has said she’d like to star in a Seberg biopic, but perhaps casting agents should consider aspiring actress and model Mariacarla Boscono, who sparked a runway trend of her own with her peroxide-blonde pixie cut at the Fall collections.”
Chloë Sevigny
“‘I’m just this girl from Connecticut, very plain looking,’ indie darling and Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny has demurred. Many would beg to differ, including those who put together Vogue’s Best-Dressed List: The oval-faced actress with the endless legs has earned a spot two years running.”
Anna Piaggi
“Her fans range from Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana to Another Magazine’s Jefferson Hack to her pal Manolo Blahnik, who calls her ‘modern beyond belief.’”
Marella Agnelli
“In 1953, Richard Avedon shot and hand-altered a famous portrait of the half-American, half-Neopolitan princess to emphasize the extraordinary length of what renowned fashion illustrator Joe Eula called ‘the most gorgeous neck in the world.’”
Grace Jones
“Her unique persona—overtly sexual yet deliberately androgynous—inspired both Andy Warhol, who painted her portrait, and Keith Haring, who painted her body for a 1985 performance at Paradise Garage.”
Lee Miller
“While Miller was in Paris, Jean Cocteau cast her as an armless statue in his movie Le Sang d’un Poète, Pablo Picasso painted her several times (she, in turn, took several photographs of him), and a glass manufacturer cast a champagne goblet from her breast.”
Greta Garbo
“Her first non-silent film, Anna Christie, was promoted with the ad tag ‘Garbo talks.’ Later, the poster for Ninotchka proclaimed: ‘Garbo laughs!’ And in 1954, 13 years after her last movie, Guinness World Records named the elusive Swedish star ‘the most beautiful woman who ever lived.’”
Doris Duke
“One of the best-loved stories about this avid traveler and collector of Islamic art involves a Middle Eastern businessman and a jet plane. (She wouldn’t agree to his price until he sweetened the deal with two camels; Duke named them Princess and Baby and ordered custom-made trailers for their transport.) She was just as lavish when it came to couture: Cristobal Balenciaga, Christian Dior, and Madame Grès were among her favorites.”
Renee Perle
“In the ‘shadowless heaven’ of [Jacques Henri] Lartigue’s photographs, glamorous women… abound, but Perle’s lacquered hair, slender silhouette, modern T-shirts, armfuls of bangles, and talonlike nails shone the brightest. ‘Around her,’ Lartigue wrote, ‘I see a halo of magic.’”
Peggy Lipton
“With her long, straw-colored, center-parted hair; wide-set, nut-brown eyes; bell-bottoms; and love beads, Lipton’s fragile yet streetwise Julie Barnes [in Aaron Spellng's The Mod Squad] epitomized the era’s free-love look. Lipton won four best actress Golden Globe nominations—and one statuette—for the part.”
Francine Du Plessix Gray
“As a teenager, she found solace in books, earned a Spence scholarship, and studied philosophy and religion at Bryn Mawr and Barnard, where her ‘antiparental cycle’ included strip poker, motorcycle jackets, and a punky haircut.”
Anjelica Huston
“She couldn’t have been more different than the all-American blondes who were landing magazine covers and ad campaigns in the late sixties. But all it took was one meeting with Vogue’s Diana Vreeland, and Anjelica Huston, daughter of Hollywood legend John Huston, was off to Ireland for a Richard Avedon shoot.”
Elsa Peretti
“[Jewelry designer] Peretti was inspired by nature, and with a 5-foot-9-inch frame, striking khaki eyes, and signature cropped locks (she claimed she used Champagne to keep them shiny), she was her own best advertisement. Nights out at Studio 54, she accessorized her pal Halston’s dresses with her horse-bit belt or with a rope of her Diamonds by the Yard flung around her neck.”
Charlotte Rampling
“Woody Allen, who directed her in Stardust Memories, once said that his ideal dinner companions would be Charlotte Rampling and Franz Kafka. Not as unlikely a combination as you might think, given the duality of Rampling’s appeal: a thoroughbred European beauty who projects more than a hint of inner darkness.”
Betty Catroux
“If she had a calling card, it would read ‘muse.’ Tom Ford dedicated his debut collection at YSL Rive Gauche to this lanky, equine beauty with the iconic curtain of blond hair.”
Gemma Ward
“With her wide-set sober gaze, ivory brow, and bee-stung pout, Gemma Ward could be a Regency beauty—although she’s actually a teenager from Perth, Australia (yes, that porcelain skin comes from a nation of devoted sun worshippers).”
Clara Bow
“Bow’s fans couldn’t get enough of her undeniable sex appeal, crystallized in the 1927 film It and in her enduring, much-pilfered nickname—’The It girl.’”
Françoise Hardy
“Even if she weren’t strikingly beautiful, Françoise Hardy would be an icon for groundbreakers.In the mid 1960s, Hardy perfectly bridged two worlds with her boho sex appeal (straight hair, eyebrow-dusting bangs, acoustic guitar) and pared-down mod aesthetic (chiseled cheekbones, an intense gaze, a Courrèges wardrobe).”
Jane Fonda
“With her patrician looks and Hollywood pedigree, it would have been easy for Jane Fonda to coast through life. Instead, she cast herself against type, using her classic beauty and detached sexiness in deliberately off-kilter roles like the future-worldly sex-kitten Barbarella and the cynical—if extremely well-coiffed—prostitute Bree Daniels in Klute.”
Mary Quant
“Even without her wildly popular, provocative designs, Mary Quant would have set London swinging. As much as any of the women who lined up outside the Kings Road shop for her boyish, body-skimming shifts and clingy knits, Quant embodied the era’s exuberant out-with-the-old feeling.”
Brigitte Bardot
“The seductively messy mass of buttery curls framing an impish, good-natured grin, all set atop abundant curves and legs as long as the Eiffel Tower, added up to a delightfully headspinning bombshell à la française.”
Frida Kahlo
“Conventions didn’t stand a chance with Frida Kahlo. From her nakedly honest self-portraits to her open bisexuality to her radical politics, the Mexican artist wrote her own rules. The same held true for her personal style. Let other women be demure and dainty, pale and powdered; Kahlo dressed in rugged men’s suits or color-soaked Mexican traditional blouses and skirts. She played up her famously dramatic features—the heavy brow, brooding eyes, and ink-black hair, center parted and slicked into a bun—and made them her signature.”
all photos and captions courtesy of Style.com.
Like this post? Find of the rest of the iconic ladies here: Beauty Icons of the Century pt. deux
Colored diamonds will make your life more colorful and add sparkle.
although i got a gorgeous green Michael Kors one-piece for my birthday, i’m always on the lookout for loverly bikinis. preferably ones without gigantic florescent hibiscus flowers and/or camouflage. this is often more difficult than it sounds, especially since i have a mental block against paying more than $40 for a tiny piece of fabric that i’ll only wear a few times a year if i’m lucky…
ok, i promise i won’t complain about the weather again in this post, but complaining about the weather is a favorite canadian past-time so really i’d just be showing my patriotism. that’s pretty patriotic for an ex-patriot.
seriously though, it’s actually a really good time to look at swimwear (among many other things, but that’s another post) because there’s a wicked summer SALE (up to 70% off) at YesStyle! who knew they had such cute, cheap swimwear??
hello! this is so deliciously “Boogie Nights” and only $28.80! i wantee! although it’s probably all wrong for me since i be sportin’ some C cups and have boyhips. this style is much better for small chested girls with wider hips. there’s also a similar style in different colors for only $31.50.
this purdy lil’ 3 piece for only $37.80 includes a tiny wee sarong which is handy if you haven’t had a wax in over a fortnight. but mostly i just love the description on this: “The two layers of frilly bkinni brief expose your appeal when you twist your body.” most of my “appeal” is in my crotchal area.
usually i hate fussy things like “beads” on a bikini, but the Missoni style print on this $37 bikini is pretty irresistible. again, the caption just says it all: “The beading on the center front and the end of the nect tie with the zic zac print enhance your hippymode on the beach.” Hippymode! is now a permanent part of my vocabulary.
yikes, the YesStyle models are a little to, eh, vapidly gorgeous for my taste. it’s kinda like, why do i even bother? they should really go for only mildly hot models. anyway, this is so sweet for only $25!. i love the style of the top (is it bandeau or string? i’ve got my top scientists on it but we may never know for sure) and is that a purple link on the bottoms? adorable.
this is so cute and only $40.50! if i had this i could go to the beach on my worst water weight day after a night of binge-drinking nothing but Guinness! i’m not totally convinced about the print, but i love this style. this would also be so great for maternity swimwear, but who am i kidding, i’m preggers with a beer baby every day.
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All images were either created by the Painfully Hip Design Collective, used with permission, or found on the web and believed to be in the public domain. If any images that appear are in violation of copyright law, please let me know and i will remove them immediately.
Thanks for reading,
Amber
painfullyhip at gmail.com
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