For those US mag readers (is there anyone not included in this population?) who enjoy the guilty pleasure of dissecting and occasionally trashing celebrities and their outfits.. here’s a blog must-read: Couture Candy’s Celebrity Blog.  I have no idea how long it’s been around actually but I found it recently and was immediately hooked.

The format is simple and the posts are dependably consistent…

The Scoop + Celebrity Fashion Photo + Links on Where to Buy

It’s so obvious that celebrities sell clothes better than any multi million dollar advertising campaign could ever live up to. Why don’t more online fashion retailers pick up on this?

Personally, I find sites like this and Frugal-Fashionista so addicting because I love to see how other girls put their outfits together. Getting dressed for events — even if it’s something as mundane as a work day can be something I look forward to and I can really get into about picking out an outfit. At other times though it can be a very grueling and painful task when feeling uninspired. Fashion magazines can provide a little boost at times but celeb photos are a far better source of inspiration. It’s real people putting real pieces together to make a look that is worn out on the real streets. The glossy fashion spreads of Vogue and Bazaar are fun to flip through but who leaves the house looking like that? A yellow feather skirt and patent leather bustier don’t make a complete look for me!

As I’ve told you before I get the warm fuzzies whenever I see fashion retail sites that put some thought into the User Experience/User Interface. I mean if we’re going to be spending hours on these sites shopping for clothes the least they could do is make it a little easier for us to make our choices, make it a little easier to compare items and view stuff in different angles and distances. 

So anyway when I went to Ron Herman’s Denim Bar I got really giddy to see the very simple but helpful view of the jeans they’ve provided. As you roll over each jean an alternate view of the same jean is shown. This reduces the amount of clickclickclicks you gotta do to decide whether you’re interested in a pair of jeans or not. Also the pictures on the listings are large enough you really don’t even need to click on each pair for a closeup. Sites like shopbop and neimans have such tiny thumbnails you have to roll over or click on every single item to get a close enough look at them. To be honest fashion retail sites have SUCH a long way to go before they maximize wen technology to make our lives easier!

Just a quick thought I had to share! Happy hunting…

http://www.ronherman.com/

This is the day I’ve waited for!! BCBG has finally re-opened the doors of their online shop. It’s about time.. those biznatches. I hate BCBG the business. And really.. who doesn’t? But we all can’t help but love their clothes. Retarded return policy. That’s all I have to say. But enuff of the ranting.. they have finally opened their online shop up and I’m pretty happy about that. Since I don’t have time to shop as much anymore at least I can take a peek online once in awhile.

And get this.. they actually let you RETURN stuff.

BCBG Online Store Return Policy
We want you to be fully satisfied with every item that you purchase
from bcbg.com. If you are not satisfied with an item that you have
purchased, you may return the item within 30 days of delivery for a
full refund of the purchase price, minus the shipping, handling, gift
wrap, and other charges.

Hallelujah! Even better reason to shop online. Does this mean they’ll update their in-store policy too???

Before I go, had to leave you with my top picks from the site.

Top Picks

BCBG Christian Jacket

BCBG Hammered Slip Dress

BCBG Silk Charmeuse Top

BCBG LeatherSilver Flat

BCBG Metal Mesh Clutch

Across the Social Network-Network (Social Network Services) I guess you’d call it, there is a growing trend of sites trying to offer people within the social community the ability to filter users out depending on their own tastes. So instead of walking into a room of strangers with no idea of who you might have more in common with, these social networks want to give you the tools to weed out those who are less like you and identify those who share the same taste as you. This is an important feature in my mind and once social network sites start to do a better job of it, could possibly take social networking to the next level. YEAH!

Last.FM was the first one I noticed to do it. I’m sure there’s others out there I didn’t know about but they were the first one I tried a compatibility test out to find other people with similar music taste as mine. I mean how cool would that be if I could just download a playlist every week with all new songs that other people with the same music taste as me had sought out? The hardest thing is finding people who’s music taste you can trust. Last.FM has a fair amount of work left to do I can say but they are damn cool for trying to take this on.

So now Kaboodle.com — my favorite Social Shopping site has launched their Style Compatibility Test. I took this a few weeks back and have since been checking out who’s got awesome style like me. So far it looks like Krist7 (top photo) and Mmumu (bottom photo) are the style winners across my Kaboodle Friend List. Nice job ladies — you must have impeccable taste.

How it works

You take a quick quiz where you rate a bunch of items 1-5 stars depending on how much you like the item, so depending on how closely you rated the items with the other users will determine what percentage style compatibility you are. Based on the test I’m 78% compatible with both Kristi7 and Mmumu…

What I just noticed is that I’m actually very low in compatibility on "Style and Fashion" with Kristi but really high on the other categories. It’s good that they break this down I suppose but it seems they should bring the overall score a bit to compensate for that. I barely noticed this.

I wish there was a way I could auto-search across the entire Kaboodle network and find other users who had the highest levels of Style and Fashion compatibility with me. Where are you friends? Come out and play with me…

Last week PinkMirage (who btw was the very very first fashion blogger I ever followed) blogged about Miss Universe and Makeup Talk. I agree wholeheartedly with her that it’s so nice to see more Asian females in the media. It sucked growing up and never seeing Asian females on TV, or in the movies and magazine who I could relate to. I mean other than Claudia or whatever her name was in Sweet Valley High… who else did we have to look to as examples or representations of Asian Americans? haha Sweet Valley..

I had heard about the newly crowned Japanese Miss Universe on the radio but after reading Pink Mirage’s post was compelled to do a little more reading up on the topic. I found out Miss Korea came in as 3rd runner-up!

Apparently there’s some controversy over who really deserved to win. I guess the translator did a poor job of translating Miss Korea, Honey Lee’s,  response to the interview question (see below for the clip), and some think that ruined Miss Korea’s chances of winning.

W/o having watched the show, it’s hard to tell who’s the better package overall but from the photos and video clips I’ve seen I must say Honey is Honey. I can’t imagine what guy would not give their right ball for one date with her. She has that sultry but adorably innocent look to her. Guys were made to go ga-ga for that combination. Riyo looks a little Amazon.. esp in this photo below.

Miss Japan– Riyo Mori

Miss Korea — Honey Lee

I love the celebration of culture and fashion through these cultural costumes — amazing.

Pictures taken from Miss Universe.com

A Video Clip of Miss Korea

Warning Advisory: Cheezy korean pop music, skimpily clad girls, and a healthy dosage of gratuitous pageant poses.

Here’s an interesting twist on fashion retail. At Famous Fashions Found.com you can shop — literally by celebrity, movie, or TV Show. This entire online shop is dedicated towards selling items the celebs have been seen wearing. And we’re talking the real stuff, not imitation pieces or knock-offs. The site design is rather crude at this point which is unfortunate since they market themselves as a luxurious, glamorous, exclusive place to shop.

The concept itself has legs. As I mentioned in Celebrities Changing the Face of Fashion we’re social creatures who look to others for fashion inspiration and identification. It’s through others that we learn about our own tastes — dislikes and likes alike. We get to know celebs on such intimate levels that it makes it easy to identify with them, almost as if we knew them personally. I bet we know more about Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton than the people we work with every day!

Anyway, back to the site… Famous Fashions Found has some great potential and I’ll be watching them over the next year. I may even make a purchase… these leather jackets below are… tempting.

If someone from Famous Fashions Found stumbles on this post… please do something about your site design already. I’ll help you create a new logo and "Buy Now" buttons for you asap if you want. It’s really that bad.

But cool site.

Another Celeb Fashion Site I Dig:

Frugal Fashionista — celeb looks deconstructed for frugal prices

I’m so happy but sad right now because I had this same idea… use the Internet to capture the feedback/input of the fashion community to rate designs which then get turned into actual detail products. Ok.. so I got the idea first from www.threadless.com.. but still… I wanted to do something like this for us!

If you haven’t heard about the contest yet… for those of you who have always wanted to design a handbag — here’s your chance. Submit your designs in sketch format to Glam.com and the public will either love you or hate you and you may very well end up getting your design selected to be created and then sold to the masses. Welcome to Fashion 2.0.

Find out more

Hey iRobot… the SHOE design content has got to be next. You just may reach shoe cobbler status sooner than you think!

For those of you who prefer intimate Boutiques over the mass chains and malls, you’ll love this online shop I discovered over the break. Disclaimer: I met one of the owners (Gemma) over the weekend. She’s a friend of a friend of my hubbys’. There’s something about Gemma that just says style, sensual, and fun — all in one. I can see why she’d make a great buyer. She says they named the store TeenyPig since they love to eat. I can most certainly relate Gemma!

What I loved about TeenyPig right off the bat was the unique items, stuff you really just can’t find at the chain stores, and what’s even more bonus is the surprisingly realistic prices. Most things range from $50-$200.

www.teenypig.com

Here’s just a few of the pieces that screamed out at me: BUY NOW!

Lure Chain Drape Back Top — $175.00

Sweetees Belle Top – $88.00

WESC Alicia Knitted Stripe Tank — $90.00

And now… give me a few days to order these before you get them. I hear their stock runs out quick

Ok I take it back… this site is actually pretty incredibly cool. After playing around with it for an hour — I’m hooked. I’d actually been thinking about this for the past 6 months or so… when would someone create a tool that allows online shoppers to browse repositories of fashion across all the sites? How annoying does that getting — go to shopbop.com, look for dresses, go to nordstrom.com, look for dresses, go to saks.com, look for dresses. I actually created my own quick links to various categories of clothing in my Kaboodle lists to save myself clicks. Bing Bang! ShopStyle finally got it. Time to go nuts ladies!

I also am finding their stylebook creator to be pretty nifty after all. It’s much more dynamic that I realized. The UI is well though out and seemingly engineered… with a few exceptions.

Features I’m Digging

1. Advanced Search for Fashion Goods
   What’s so great about ShopStyle’s search is the functionality to constrain your search down by brand, store, % sale, price, size — or better yet a combo of any of those variables.

   Here’s an example of how you’d select the stores to constrain the search by:

   + Click on item to see enlarged view

   

2. Set Price Alert
   I can see I’ll be quite addicted to this bad boy. How many times have you found something you wanted but wanted to wait until it went on sale to "close the deal"? Problem solved! Just set the "price alert" on the item in ShopStyle and you’ll be emailed when the item goes on sale. See below.

   + Click on item to see enlarged view

   

    

3. StyleBook Creator
   As mentioned in Shopstyle.com — A New fashion Search Engine or Another Fashion Social Network?, you can create stylebooks which are almost like your own fashion spreads, or features of items you think make a unique grouping or fashion statement.

   For starters, I’m hoping they give us more flexibility when re-arranging items. Currently, you got to click on each item to move it around spot by spot. See below.

   1. 

      What would be even better is drag and drop!

ShopStyle got one thing right.. and I’m not sure if they got there w/o even realizing they were doing it, but they’ve provided the ability for bloggers to create fashion feature sets/spreads like we normally do w/o all the extra work. Good job guys!

I like to stand naked in my closet in the mornings stressing over what to wear to wear. Ok not really. When I can spare the time I can get lost for hours in my closet coordinating outfits, it’s fun for me.. even relaxing on some days, but on most normal days this is a routine I wish could be automated.

As far as I know no tool or service like that exists for outfit-automation but in the meantime, Polyvore makes outfit creation pretty damn fun — online! How it works is you install a plug-in to grab articles of clothing off websites which are saved to your editor where you can then drag and drop the clothes, layer then on top of one another and create an entire look or outfit. You can also browse sets of other outfits girls have put together using the same items you used.

See below:

An outfit someone created…

All the other looks/outfits others have put together using the same blue top.

Selecting what looks good with what is so much easier when you can see all the pieces and parts juxtaposed. I used to lay out the outfits for my blog posts in Photoshop but after EllleElle turned me onto this niftiness of this tool I was sold. You can use it for more than just fashion… furniture layout, etc. Again — something I used to do in Photoshop for HOURS.

It will be interesting to see where Polyvore goes with this tool. Jianing and team — best of luck and contact me when you’re ready for user feedback!!

As for those dreaded mornings in the closet once I’ve created my Virtual Closet product I’ll let you all know You’ll be able to record every item in your closet in a online catalog and sign up for a stylist service that coordinates outfits for you. Sound like a service?