Custom Design

If you love the Valentino aesthetic but can’t justify shelling out two grand (or far more) for one of their plush, ladylike bags full of bows, ruffles and flowers, I may have a viable alternative for you.

The Villador Carpetto Bow Bag has a couple of Valentino’s most obvious signatures – drool-worthy leather and an oversized bow placed proudly for all to see – without being a ripoff. It’ll also run you about half of what Valentino’s most basic bags usually cost, and who can’t get behind that?

I don’t love the seaming around the edges of the leather “ribbon” (I think it looks a bit cheap, in fact), but I’m willing to overlook it because the leather itself, which is goatskin, looks so soft and touchable.

Other than the bow and the texture, the structure and color remind me a lot of another designer – Chloe. It has a boho feel and attitude to it, and the slouchy look is perfect to wear with boyfriend jeans or a flowing sundress. Buy through Luisa Via Roma for $1054.

Original post by Amanda Mull

One thing that a lot of designers seem to have a very hard time doing is creating a bag that is both expensive-looking and covered in animal print. It’s not surprising since animal print is historically “tacky chic” at best, and at worst, just plain tacky. Getting past the initial “eww, is that zebra?” thought is a difficult sell for a lot of handbag customers in particular, since most people prefer their expensive bags to be neutral and timeless.

Somehow, though, the Roger Vivier Zebra Tote manages to look luxurious and chic in a traditional way, while still being boldly and obviously animal print. How did the designer pull it off? I have a theory, of course.

The folks at Vivier did two things very, very right with this bag: first, they kept the materials high-end. Most designers resort to non-leather materials when they want to make animal print because leather is difficult to dye in precise patterns. Choosing something like cotton canvas automatically downgrades the look, making the print look cheap by association. Instead of making that mistake, the designer used calfskin, giving the bag a richness that it would likely not have otherwise.

The second thing that the designer did correctly was not assume that simply using a pattern would be enough attention to detail. If the goal was to make something modern and minimalist, that would have been fine, but in this situation it probably wouldn’t cut it. Instead, the fine color variation in the dye makes the bag look well-crafted and beautifully wrought, increasing the style quotient exponentially. Vivier should teach classes in this sort of thing. Buy through Luisa Via Roma for $2451.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Oh how I adore Halloween. I’d gladly trade Thanksgiving every year for Halloween Part Two, but since I’m not the person that gets to decide such things, I merely try to enjoy it as much as I can while it’s here.

And that’s what Gossip Girl did last night – or tried to do, anyway. I was a little disappointed that the writers didn’t make more out of the metaphorical idea of wearing masks and the need to be appear something other than what we actually are – they’re usually all over that kind of stuff like white on rice. They did give a small nod to the idea that Jenny wears her high school crown uneasily, and behold, the actor that plays Eric not only isn’t dead in a ditch somewhere, but he still has the ability to recite lines. Could have fooled me.

But mostly, Halloween on the Upper East Side just meant we got sparkly dresses and a reason to have a party. And I’m never opposed to a party Or a sparkly dress, for that matter.

When we left off last week, everyone had been betrayed. Blair sold out Chuck, Nate sold out Serena and she sold him out right back, Vanessa sold out Olivia and Dan and utterly failed at it, because she’s Vanessa. Everyone was still pissed at everyone else, except we don’t know how anyone felt about Vanessa since she apparently crawled into a shame hole somewhere and stayed there for the whole episode. Let’s hope she stays for the season.

Blair and Chuck have nominally made up, but Chuck is doing the teenage girl thing where he accepts Blair’s apology to her face and then continues to seethe and undermine her privately, on his own time. Which, you know, he’s a busy man. He’s got a new hotel that’s at woefully low occupancy heading up to the holidays, and he’s got to do something about that, lest he become failure (but even if he did become a failure, he’d still be a billionaire, so he’d still be doing better than basically everyone else on the planet).

So he’s going to open a club, but he’s going to do it without Blair, because he’s still silently punishing her for making him kiss that dude. I kind of don’t blame him. And he’s going to enlist Serena for help, because he needs controversy and famous people in order to make the club, and by association, the hotel, super popular and those things happen to be Serena’s specialty (really, it’s perfect that she’s a publicist now). But Serena and Blair are besties (until the end of the episode at least), so Blair finds out about the whole thing in a half-baked speakerphone plot that Chuck would have seen right through, were these real people that weren’t reading from scripts.

But before we get too far into that, let’s deal with the Jenny issue. She’s still nominally the Queen Bee, but she claims to be playing the part only so that a less benevolent dictator doesn’t move in to the potential power vacuum. But Eric’s little twink boyfriend, Jonathan or Jeremy or whatever his unimportant name is, thinks that that’s just bananas, and that he’s going to go sit a higher than Jenny on the Met steps, thereby forcing her into some sort of step power struggle in order to preserve her position of dominance in front of her minions. As Eric so aptly pointed out, it’s hard to lead if no one thinks they have to follow, and the whole thing somehow ends with Eric getting a parfait dumped on his head. Parfait always reminds me of Shrek. Maybe I’m the only one.

When that incident comes to light, Jenny’s new mommy Lily sits her down and explains some hard truths about being a queen and sympathizes a little too much for a mom that just had her recently suicidal, newly out of the closet son assaulted with a girly dairy product. The only punishment that she manages to meter out to Jenny is that she’s required to take her new stepbrother with her to Chuck’s boozy, star-studded club opening. Not exactly punishment, since he was her best gay up until earlier that day.

So yeah, about that party. Chuck decides he’s going to open the club like a day before he plans to have this swanky, 20s-themed debut Halloween party, and the only problem is the liquor license. Those things take forever to get – months. But Chuck is powerful, so he believes that he can rush the application, and sure enough he gets it in the nick of time. Or so he thinks. Actually, Blair has found out about the whole thing and plans to show her love for him by contacting Uncle Jack Bass to move things along. I’m not sure why we’re supposed to believe that Jack can get the license any more quickly than Chuck can, since you’d think that Chuck would be at least as well-connected, but he supposedly comes through for Blair and gets the license. She can’t tell Chuck, though, because she’s still not supposed to know that the club is opening.

Meanwhile, Serena has some machinations of her own at hand. Olivia and Dan are considering the possibility of doing the nasty for the first time (shenanigans – if they were real people, they already would have. Long ago), and Olivia gets photographed by the paparazzi while picking up some freebie condoms at the NYU health center. You’d think she’d know better, but I guess her lust for Dan’s newly muscled body has her all flustered.

But Dan’s distracted by something different – Olivia’s Twilight-esque film work with her ex-boyfriend is making him highly uncomfortable. She claims it was a fake relationship, but it wasn’t, and her publicist/Serena’s boss wants them to continue to appear together in public in order to keep the dude’s career afloat.

As you can guess, this all ties together at Chuck’s club opening. He had already found out that Blair had gone to Jack for help and barred her from coming to the party as a result (he also managed to get Serena on his side). But that liquor license that she procured? Well, it’s a fake because Jack and Chuck still hate each other and he wouldn’t honestly help out with the club opening, and Jack sent her flowers right before the club opening that included a message to that effect. As a result, she has to show up and spill the beans to Chuck about the impending bust that Jack was undoubtedly planning. And Chuck puts on the angry face with Blair for a moment, but then they realize that they have a great opportunity to join forces and grab some publicity by calling the cops themselves to bust the party. Which is a beautiful resolution to all of this, really – their compatibility always has been based on their mutual underhandedness.

But before the bust can happen, some other drama has to go down. Jenny has to take Eric to the party, and Eric’s boyfriend (who started all this trouble in the first place by trying to upset the high school power structure) comes too and he gets egged by the minions outside. I’m having a problem feeling particularly sorry for him, however, and I think that Eric needs to break up with him and explore his options. He’s a young, rich gay man in the city! The possibilities are endless! And the whole incident just makes him madder at Jenny (she did, after all plan it), meanwhile making her more sure that she needs to be more queenly. That’ll go well, I’m sure.

And then there’s the little matter of Dan and Olivia – Serena lies to her boss about why she was keeping the party a secret and has her fly in Olivia’s ex to have them reunite in front of the paparazzi. Dan shows up anyway and things get a little weird and awkward in the way that only old boyfriend/new boyfriend scenarios can be, but Serena saves the day with one of her strongest skills – making out with Olivia’s old boyfriend in front of photographers in order to create new buzz for both Olivia and her ex. Plus, she did it in an inappropriately short, tight, shiny dress! She’s really gifted at the whole publicity thing.

But as we all knew they would, the cops show and kick everyone out into the street in their Roaring 20s finery, creating a paparazzi feeding frenzy and giving all of these people exactly what they want – more attention. Chuck and Blair are back and his club is front-page news, Dan and Olivia are now publicly a couple (and now they’re boning!), and Serena gets to keep her publicity job as long as she keeps publicly kissing that dude.

Oh, but there is one issue – in a bit of a blast from the past, Blair and Serena are now feuding over Serena’s refusal to take Blair’s side in the Jack Bass fiasco and her disinterest in quitting her job to become the club’s publicist. It seems to somehow result in Blair’s face in a cake next week, which I absolutely cannot wait to see.

Original post by Amanda Mull

So, here we are again. It’s a familiar place. This week on Project Runway, we had another challenge in which our designers were asked to take some money and buy some fabric and make an outfit. Yawn. Where are the corn husks and car parts and recycled water bottles of seasons past? All of these people should be able to make perfectly serviceable outfits out of $150 worth of fabric.

Or you would think so, at least. But because this season is full of fail, that’s not the case. What the designers were asked to do – make an outfit based on a popular vacation destination – was reasonable and also ridiculously easy, but still, some people failed. At least this week, it was the usual suspects. The thinning of the heard continues, as does Irina’s insistence on making me want to punch her in the throat.

And I hated her even more this episode because she did well, and I want to see her fall on her stank face (seriously, she ALWAYS looks like she just smelled a particularly heinous fart.) Michael Kors (who was the guest designer that they met with this week, which was silly since he’s on the show’s cast, he’s not a guest) charged the designers with making outfits based on locations around the world that have inspired his own line. Tim Gunn pulled the designers’ names from the Velvet Bag of Choosing and they chose their places, all with very obvious aesthetics that should have been easy to design around.

But some of these people can’t even make a decent outfit when the inspiration is LITERALLY handed to them, so what should have been easy actually went pretty badly. As I mentioned, however, Irina was in our top three, as were Carol Hannah and Gordana. Gordana chose New York City, so she made a little grey cocktail dress that was quite cute, except for the bejeweled neck piece, which was not cute, it was FABULOUS. I must have one IMMEDIATELY. In necklace form. Please and thank you. The rest of the dress was a bit meh, but the necklace won me over immediately. If anyone knows of a similar one that I can order on the internet somewhere, LINK ME, PLEASE.

Carol Hannah chose Palm Beach (which I always get mixed up with Palm Springs, so I was a little confused for most of the episode, I was expecting a golf outfit) and made a very pretty patterned maxi dress. Irina had chosen Aspen, so she made a poop-colored ensemble with pants, a sweater with an enormous cowl neck, and a faux fur vest.

And I hate myself for saying this, and I hate Irina even more for making me say it, but Irina was the obvious winner here and was rightfully recognized by the judges. The 80s are all the rage right now, and her outfit was a total 80s aprés ski moment. It obviously fit her destination and was reasonably well-executed. So, another one goes to that woman.

I think a lot of her success was because she chose her location well, however – cold weather clothing is much more textured and interesting than that of warm weather, and a vacation destination has a much more obvious look than a city (although I would have loved it if Gordana had taken the opportunity to do a glam-grunge 80s NYC club look, a la Marc Jacobs Fall 2009).

But as is always the case this season, we also had several woefully terrible outfits. Logan made jeans, a tank top, and a vest, but his destination was Hollywood, and for some reason that’s all he could come up with. He should have at least tried for some Olsen Twin Derelicte insanity or SOMETHING. But boringness is not the same as terribleness, so he’s still around, despite his astonishingly obvious mediocrity.

Our bottom two were designers that are familiar with the position: Nicolas and Christopher. Which is too bad, because I was just starting to LIKE Nicolas. Since Irina became the obvious villain, Nicolas has been getting a much kinder edit. His assignment was to make a Greek outfit and he didn’t make anything remotely Grecian, which he admitted, and I kind of respect him for so directly rejecting the premise of such a thoroughly lame challenge. Which is not to say I liked his outfit – the top was kind of interesting, but the pants were kind of odd and not particularly flattering.

And then there was Chris, who had Santa Fe, and whose outfit I didn’t hate quite as much as the judges apparently did. In the workroom, it looked like the prairie dresses that those weird polygamist sects that live out in the middle of nowhere force their women to wear, but he had an epiphany and hacked the floor-length skirt into a mini, which was a moment of clarity that he really needed to have. His color scheme wasn’t one that I would wear, but it definitely reminded me of New Mexico, although the judges didn’t agree. Everyone DID think that the leather belt he made was cool, though, and as it turned out, that’s probably what saved him.

Yes, that’s right, Nicolas was the one that went home, just when he was starting to be kind of likable. Too bad, too. I don’t think he was right for this competition, but Christopher has been so horrendously bad for the past several challenges that I felt fairly certain that he would be the one to be auf’d.

And if there’s one person I wish WASN’T leaving, it’s guest judge Milla Jovovich. I loved her! She was insightful and snarky and got all sad when Nicolas left. Plus, I wore a Jovovich-Hawk dress to my college graduation and got lots of compliments! I would be totally willing to trade Heidi for her.

I don’t remember what happened in the previews for next week, honestly. Well, except for that Althea says that she hates Logan because he steals her collar from the Bob Mackie challenge, so, fine. That happens. Maybe they’ll get rid of Logan next. He needs to go, as does Christopher.

Original post by Amanda Mull

Folks, this is the big one. Supposedly, anyway.

One of the big centerpieces of the season finale of Real Housewives of Atlanta was a fight we didn’t actually get to see, which is a problem. Another big event was a come-to-Jesus moment between a fiance and a future mother-in-law when we know that the wedding never happens, which is also a problem. And then there was Sheree’s fashion show, which I assumed would be a problem, but was actually fairly benign. But I guess two out of three is still pretty bad.

As producers rushed to wrap up a zillion different inane story lines which they had constructed for these women over the past several months, I felt as though something was lost in translation. And that something was: WHERE WAS THE FOOTAGE OF NENE CHOKING OUT KIM??? I’M NOT WATCHING THIS FOR MY HEALTH, BRAVO.

Excuse me, I need a moment.

Ok. So.

First, let’s wrap up the “Who’s Yo Daddy?” thing. Nene still thinks that that dude we met last week is, but her husband is trying to give her the stiff arm in forming a relationship with him, which made him seem like a douche on the show but actually might be good advice. He hasn’t done anything to earn a relationship other than donate some sperm a couple of decades ago, and when you’re newly famous and possibly rich (big “possibly” there), it’s probably not the time to go trying to make nice with your deadbeat father. Not that he seemed like he was all that interested in making nice anyway. Bam. Done.

Next, Lisa. Lisa’s house was foreclosed upon this year, which she conveniently forgot to mention on this episode. She and Ed decide that it’s time to move (probably a good idea when you’re getting kicked out) to a property that they own in Chateau Elan. Two fun facts about Chateau Elan: 1. It’s so far outside of Atlanta that it underlines the fact that NONE of these people, save for Kandi, actually live in Atlanta. It’s like doing a Real Housewives of New York with a bunch of people that live in Jersey. 2. I worked in Chateau Elan’s marketing office until January, at which point I got laid off and became the PurseBlogger you all know and love today. So, shout out to them for laying me off into a better job! In exchange, they get a live-in Real Housewife. I wish I could say I was responsible for that.

Before we talk She by Sheree, let’s talk Nene and Kim. Over the summer while the show was being filmed, Nene and Kim apparently had some sort of altercation circa Target that ended in Nene trying to choke Kim out. Because the summer is a super slow news season, everyone in Atlanta (and probably most of you out there on the Internet. I know what you waste your time doing. Reading Perez Hilton.) has already heard about this fight. What I don’t know is why we didn’t get to see it – reports indicate that Bravo cameras were present but they simply chose to not tape it. Also, Nene hasn’t been arrested or charged, despite the fact that there were “witnesses” and Kim called 911.

So, uh, I call shenanigans. I don’t think it happened. If anyone within a mile of these two had been holding a camera when this happened, Bravo would have fallen all over themselves to get the footage. And if it did happen, Nene continues to disappoint me. She also acted like a dick to Kandi at Sheree’s show, demanding an apology for an argument that she had started at the LAST party Sheree had. Plus she was acting like Bobby Valentino, wearing her sunglasses in the club. Not cute. Get it together, Nene. You’re my favorite and you’re making me feel conflicted about that. As far as any physical fight goes, my philosophy is thus: pics or it didn’t happen.

Speaking of Kandi, her portion of the show was one of the shortest and also easily the saddest. At a Mother’s Day barbecue, her mom finally sat down with AJ and gave him her blessing and told him that she wanted to work things out so that he and Kandi could be happy together. Just sad. If Nene can’t get on my level, Kandi is my new favorite housewife. She’s on notice.

So at this point, it’s time for She by Sheree to make its sort-of-awaited debut. Sheree wandered around during the fittings and show preparations, alternately fretting over tickets to a game (probably baseball) and whether or not her Hair Gay would be able to stick a big, bushy hair monster to the back of her head in time for her to watch everything. As far as final fittings, makeup, accessories, and seating? Dwight. Alllll Dwight. Give the man a show. Better yet, kick Sheree off and give the man a fashion line. Sheree wanted to fight with him on everything, and he was right about all of it. Tailoring, accessorizing, Sheree’s hair, all of it. She thinks that you can do a fashion show by styling things how they would be worn on the street, people…Dwight may act like a douche, but for putting up with that kind of idiocy, I think he can act however he wants.

Surprisingly, the clothes were pretty okay for being designed by someone with such a distinct lack of taste. They weren’t awesome, but they were serviceable. A few things were even kind of fetching. What was totally obvious was that the runway show was much more professional than Lisa’s, even though Lisa had to get in a few words about how much the line sucked. Honey, hush, it was better than yours. In the case of She by Sheree vs. Closet Freak, She by Sheree is the clear winner.

And that was kind of it. Not a hugely entertaining finale, but when there’s no footage of the big fight that they hyped up, I guess it was never going to be anything but a letdown. There were, however, one or two jokes in the “where are they now” information at the end. Sheree, our resident man in a woman’s body (or is it woman in a man’s body?), is working on releasing workout videos and Kim, our resident idiot with a ring, has still not set a date for her wedding and Big Poppa has yet to actually get divorced. It’s good to know that some things never change.

I’ll be recapping our motley crew’s reunion next week, and then it’s on the the Real Housewives of Orange County. Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.

Original post by Amanda Mull

We all knew it couldn’t last for long.

When we left our Upper East Siders on Monday prior, truth was the word of the day. Secrets had been revealed, acceptance and forgiveness had been doled out in appropriate amounts, and everyone heaved a collective sigh of relief. But these people love drama more than middle school girls do, and the quickest route to drama is through deception.

In short, everyone started lying again, and lying beget the necessity for our newly minted college students to sell each other out. Even Vanessa tried her hand at it, which she really shouldn’t, because she’s not dastardly. And Nate failed too, because he is an imbecile. But it was Blair’s failure that might cost her the most of all.

My expectations were low when the whole shindig started with Nate and Serena hatching a plan. I don’t trust that those two have the combined intellectual power to make sure that they remember their potty training, let alone to pull off a brilliant caper. Blair and Chuck, they’re not. Good thing that the caper wasn’t particularly brilliant.

In fact, the entire thing was suitably convoluted. Carter, cad extraordinaire, has been whisked off to a Texas oil rig by the Buckley family goons to perform what is basically an epic version of washing the dishes when you can’t afford the check for dinner. They’re going to force him into indentured servitude until he pays back half a million dollars in gambling debts that they had made disappear following his engagement to Bree’s sister, and somehow the best way to solve this problem is to play poker.

Yep, poker. Bree’s brother plays clandestine, illegal poker in some kind of industrial facility (why not in a swanky hotel suite? He’s rich. Take a page from Chuck Bass’s playbook, dude) and the buy in is $25,000, and Nate thinks it’s a brilliant idea to set Serena up to play and then raise the stakes high enough to win back Carter’s freedom. Nate tells Serena that it’ll all be okay since Bree got tipsy one night and told him all of her brother’s “tells,” which makes no sense, why would they talk about that? Nate also told Serena that she had to play because Bree’s brother hated him and would never let him play, and then proceeded to sit right behind her the entire time and help her. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

When Serena is predictably terrible at poker (since she is pretty and breast-y and long-legged but, ultimately, an idiot) and loses all of the money that they were playing with, Nate offers up a little bit of political blackmail in order to raise the stakes. See, his cousin Tripp is now running for Congress, and the Buckleys are scheming to make sure he doesn’t get elected. Nate has a photo on his phone of his cousin taking what looks like a bong hit at his bachelor party, and Nate offers to bet it against Carter’s freedom. Which is silly, since Carter isn’t in jail, if he’s really being imprisoned then he should just call the police.

Serena had no idea that Nate was going to do any of this, and she’s super nervous and then, naturally, loses the picture and Carter’s freedom. Because she doesn’t know how to play poker, and Nate doesn’t actually know any of the guy’s tells after all. You see, it was all a nefarious scheme. Set Serena up to lose the picture in the name of winning back her boyfriend, the Buckleys release the picture to the media, and then the Vanderbilts release the REAL version of the photo (which only shows Tripp holding a beer) to make the Buckleys look like lying, deceitful political opportunists that doctored a photo in order to steal an election. Ta-da.

Is it just me, or is that whole process probably too complicated for Nate to understand in writing, let alone carry out in reality? And he isn’t successful at it because Serena overhears him spill the beans on the phone, and she tips off the Buckleys and allows them to save political face in exchange for Carter’s freedom. But he doesn’t want her gosh-darn charity, he wants to work off his douchebaggery on an oil rig, so he’s mad at her. Well, he’s not really mad at her. He’s projecting his own self-loathing ON to her, and there’s a distinction there.

So Nate’s mad at Serena, Serena’s mad at Nate, and Carter is mad at Serena (and presumably also Nate, but who knows/cares?). Moving on to the real plot.

It’s Freshman Parents’ Weekend Banquet Dinner Highland Fling Whatever at NYU which means, you guessed it, another reason to get a big portion of the cast together and for hijinks to ensue. I call shenanigans on the entire concept of getting all of the freshman class and their parents together at one time in the first place, and also on the idea that it’s an event that anyone that goes to NYU would actually clear an evening to attend.

And not only did they do just that, but Blair and Vanessa fought bitterly over who would be making the toast to kick off the evening. An evening which, in reality, only the kids that were already filling out grad school applications and hoping to impress faculty would deign to attend. And for some reason, NYU has decided to worship at the altar of Vanessa (which would never really happen – quasi-charitable, self-righteous, neo-hippie douchebags are a dime a dozen at a school like that) and offer her the opportunity to give the toast. Blair volunteers herself for the job, but no one at NYU likes Blair, including the faculty and staff, so they don’t take her up on it.

But then Fake Hannah Montana throws a wrench into the works. She’s back from Japan and slobbering all over Dan again, and he insists that she come to the Freshman Barn Dance and Yodeling Contest or whatever and meet his parents. Since she’s famous and all, she was offered the toast-making honors before Vanessa was contacted, and now that she’s attending the dinner she reconsiders and accepts the gig, unwittingly ousting Vanessa.

What happened after that is almost too convoluted to retell, but I’ll give it a shot: Blair makes another grab for the toast, she gets denied, she tells Vanessa that Olivia has yanked it out from under her. Vanessa tells Olivia that Dan doesn’t really want her to meet his parents and she shouldn’t go to the dinner, Vanessa tells Dan that Olivia doesn’t want to meet his parents and he should have alone time with her instead. Blair cons Chuck into kissing the Freshman Toasting Liason or whatever, who is a dude, in order to secure her spot as the toast-maker. So, Blair wins. For now.

But, hark, what is this! Vanessa commandeers a microphone before the shindig starts and is able to broadcast Blair saying a bunch of nasty, Blair-ish things about NYU people to everyone at the banquet, but that doesn’t mean Vanessa wins. She still loses. First, because she’s Vanessa, and second, because her pretentious a-hole of a mom hears her talking smack about how she wishes Rufus and Lily were her parents, and third, because Dan and Olivia both figure out her scheme and get mad at her for almost ruining their relationship. One can only hope that Vanessa will be so distraught by all of these happenings that she’ll flee the city forever, never to return.

But she’s not the only one reeling from the experience. Chuck was at the dinner, surprise surprise, and heard what Blair said about duping him into being part of her scheme under the guise of a sex game. And he’s mad, understandably, because homosexual makeouts in public are probably not his main form of casual entertainment, and if he’s going to do it, then he better have all the facts!

So by the end of the episode, everyone hates Blair, everyone hates Vanessa, and the former rivals find themselves sitting sadly together at a table in that coffee shop that everyone just happens to go to, staring at their croissants and feeling sorry for themselves. Fret not, little ladies – everything will change next week. It always does.

Original post by Amanda Mull

While I’ve always been a fan of all things Michael Kors, my love has been re-energized by the drop dead gorgeous MK Gown Debra Messing wore to the 2009 Emmy Award show the other night. This year’s Emmys was jam packed with gorgeous gowns, yet it is the MK gown I can’t stop thinking about.

So, as I am obsessing over the gown, I am now also re-obsessing over his handbags. I’ve been busy trying to pick out my new Michael Kors bag for the past 36 hours and I don’t even know where to start… so many to choose from.

I love how Kors knows how to constantly re-invent himself and his designs while always remaining both true to the classics and embracing new trends. An excellent example of this is the Michael Kors Heidi Tumbled Lamb Large Hobo. The first thing that came to mind was classic meets trendsetter. This is the kind of bag that should be the model when it comes to how to properly execute a slouchy hobo. Gorgeous lambskin leather and an oversized buckle detail play off one another perfectly. The leather being classic and the buckle offering the element of trendsetting. Once again, I love the single shoulder strap and other gold toned hardware. It is clear that this bag is elegant yet chic, timeless yet urban. Yet no matter which way you slice or dice it, I think we will most almost all agree; this bag is fabulous. Buy through Bloomingdale’s for $1195.

Original post by Shannon Mahoney