Don’t you just love the feeling of finding a piece of clothing that seems like it should cost you much much more than it really does? It’s nice that over the years the cheap n chic and luxe for less movement has helped make looking fashionable more realistic for everyone. But even so, with all these discount fashion retailers out there, it’s still challenging to find the finds.

Lately, Kitsch Couture in downtown Saratoga, CA seems to be a consistent source of these deals. Don’t be disappointed in their website.. the owner told me they are not focusing on their online presence. The boutique itself has some great stuff and tends to be quite well stocked. They carry a wide array of contemporary women’s clothing. Gentle Fawn and Kensie Girl are a few of the luxe for less brands they carry. If you haven’t heard of those you should definately check them out. They offer chic, urban styles at decent prices. Plus if you search for these brands online you’ll find a ton of cute avant garde online boutiques.

Check out this cute cropped cargo style jacket from BIZZ that my friend Jenny got. The jacket was $68! It’s cute worn both buttoned up and loosely open. The material is fairly thin so it’s more suited for the cooler summer nights, but worn over a thicker sweater or turtleneck this could definitely get you through fall and some of winter. The funnel neck (when the jacket is fully buttoned up) is super cute. Jenny you better work this when you get back to New York!
 

Hey Manolo lovers and Jimmy Chooholics… need your help and input. If you’ve been around The Luxe Mix since the good old days when I first started this, you should recall a post I did about high heels and how to wear them comfortably. This is a topic near and dear to my heart. So near and dear to me that I actually invented my own shoe pad. Mmmmmm Hmmmm, that’s right ladies. I have the perfect solution to all your toe boo boos and foot owwies. I tried pretty much every shoe pad out there to try to make my life at work on heels a little more bearable. I’ve tried everything at the store and a ton more tricks that I had up my sleeve.. until finally one day I said screw it I’m going to make my own shoe pad.

Thanks to Choxie Snoops, who has stepped in like the ever-energetic and superpowered leading lady that she is, we are bringing these foot pads to life! We are just getting ready to soft-launch our first batch of them in a couple weeks.

You can get your very first sample of our shoe pad by filling out 10 quick responses on our Heel Habits Survey. This offer is limited to fill it our quick! We’ll be giving away pads to the first 100 respondents. Please be patient for your shoe pad sample as we will be sending these out when we soft-launch our first batch.

Launch Survey

Thanks for you help and participation. One day soon we will end foot pain for all.

Made popular amongst my friends by “No Bones” Julie.. liquid leggings are still hot these days and seemingly impossible to find. I first saw them on Lindsay Lohan prob. in US Weekly (where else?) and knew they’d be big for night life wear. What could be next for leggings? So far we’ve seen zippers, bows, ruching, exotic materials/textures, lace, buttons, reflective…  I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Here’s the few pairs of liquid leggings could find. Ladies, cast your votes on which pair is a must-get. Also, if any of you dare to wear these out, I’m curious to see how you’ve worn them so send me a picture if you have one!

American Apparel RSAC306 Shiny Leggings

Members Only Liquid Leggings at Kitson

Slick Leggings at Nordstrom

Celebrities in their Liquid Leggings

Did some damage at Santana Row this weekend.. then decided to put on my own fashion show. Lucky you get front row seats HAHA!

PS. Post-shopping-splurge (generally about 48 hours after the thrill of the kill), both Snoopy and I had some post-shopping second thoughts. I may return at least 1 pair of the 2 pants that I bought, and 1 top. BTW, both these items didn’t make the cut to get featured in my video. The power of the subconscious…

I’m compelled to write this post for 2 reasons…

1. The flubber around my belly is stubbornly refusing to go away with my usual diet and workout so I’m getting ready to dose up on my workout regimen and I need new stuff to flex my flub!!

2. When I check my Typepad Stats I’m shocked to see how many of my Luxe Mix visitors are looking for something “fashionable” to wear to the gym.

I wrote a post over a year about the importance of looking your best at the gym and how you can-not-must-not-please-don’t drag yourself into the gym with those ratty undesirable things you normally throw on for your work out. It seems this is popular topic because so many people click this page.. I suppose in hopes of finding something to wear that will inspire them to get to the gym. That’s awesome ladies!! Keep it up and in the meantime here are some more links and workout looks to get you jump-started for your next sweat fest.

Top 10 Fashionable Workout Clothing Designers

1. Stella McCartney for Addidas

While I’ll admit her clothes are not exactly things I’d wear everyday to the gym, I had no choice but to put at the top of my list because.. well it’s Stella. Stella (Yep on a first name basis) obviously puts some real design into her fitness line. There’s interesting details that add intrigue to her pieces.. strategically placed seams, zippers, straps, ruching, ribbon.. these help turn something basic and expected into the unexpected. Guess if you’re going to shell out $100 for a workout top it should stand out from the crowd right?

I’d love to see more variation in the color tones. As you can see she Stella’s line is all about soft muted neutrals. It gives it a more feminine and soft appeal. You hard bodies our there might prefer something else below.

Available at Stella at Addidas.com

2. Lu Lu Lemon

This Canadian-based Yoga clothing company puts out the clean, simple, sporty pieces that work well for us clean, simple, sporty Americans. I’ve noticed a lot of workout clothing companies are based out of Brazil. No wonder those Brazilian hotties have such smokin bodies! They must work out all the time. See.. it does take hard work Focus!!! I also heard the quality of these pants make them indestructible.The only problem here is that I haven’t found any reputable online retailers of Lulu Lemon so you’re on your own. Check their website (link below) for locations.

Look for store locations or retailers at Lululemon.com

3. Zobha

This company is based out of Mill Valley here in the SF Bay Area. I can’t remember how I found them but once I saw their activewear I was impressed! The clean sleep style is very Eco-Organic-conscious-looking. Very fitting for the Nor-Cal fitness queens. And I don’t mean that in a bad way, but it is true right?

Available at Zobha.com

4. Anatomie Style

Anatomie scored high on my list back a year ago when I did my first post, but this year I’m a little disappointed by the lack of good inventory on Anatomie’s website.. so I no choice but to place them at #34 I hope they get their act together and put out some more of the stylish gear we need!!

Available at AnatomieStyle.com

5. Fitness Fit

You’ll like Fitness Fit if you’re more into looking active than prissy at the gym. I find their workout clothes to be sporty but still stylish.

Available at FitnessFit.com

6. Bluefish Activewear

Based out of Miami, Bluefish Activewear claims to offer stylish workout attire that you can get away with wearing comfortably to post-workout errands. Nice gear here but generally standard stuff.

Available at BlueFishActivewear.com

7. Planet Body
Another Brazillian company. A bit sexy (not too mention a little funky) for what I think we American gals can get away with but hot nevertheless.

Available at Planet Body Activewear.com

My friends that is my list for 2008. I hope to share more goodies in this area of looking fashionably fit with you next year!

Read more

If you don’t know what I do for a living I should give you a little background about me so this post will make some sense. I work for Cisco as a "User Experience Designer" or "UX" where I design Digital/Video Media technology products. There’s a process we follow as designers that we refer to as the "User Centered Design Process". It’s literally that. We design products centered around those people who will use the product. I’m very passionate about my work and I know this process works… so the other day when I saw some Kenneth Jay Lane jewelery at Bloomies I was ecstatic to see he’s following the "User Centered Design Process" to design great looking but comfortable jewelry!

How long have we been forced to wear ill-fitting bangles or bracelets? I’ve always found the big chunky ones to be particularly un-wearable. They are always huge and if I put them on they’ll just slip right off my hand. So what did Kenneth do?  He added hinges to the bracelet! Why did it take so long for someone to figure this one out? If you’ve tried on any of Kenneth Jay Lane’s bracelets you’ll know what I’m talking about. You can slip the bracelet on with ease since the hinge help the bracelet open wide to a normal wrist-sized diameter. The rings have bendable hinges as well to grasp your finger (although these rings were way to big on my hand so I can’t honestly say whether these are ingeniously well designed or not).

I bought a bracelet right then and there just for design-appreciation sake. If Kenneth can make the effort to put some thought into his jewelery the least I can do is buy something! Mine is black and gold one similar in colors to the one below in the right but I must say mine is much edgier and HOT. I’ll post a pic someday… my camera is acting up right now.

Oh and I did mention that all his jewelery is so stylish it just makes it all the more incredible to me. I want to buy it all!

Pictured above (left to right):

Kenneth Jay Lane Snake Bracelet, Kenneth Jay Lane Giraffe Bracelet, Kenneth Jay Lane Stretch Bracelet

If you want to view/shop Kenneth Jay Lane check out Shopbop or Pinkmascara.

Lately while fingering through the racks at the mall I haven’t been able to tell whether it’s a top or a dress,
and the guys are wondering whether we’ve left the house w/o our pants
on. Yes.. that means the mini or should i say micro dress is very much
in these days. I’m going to have to kick it up a little at my
kickboxing this month if I want to be ready for this summer trend..

It’s been awhile since I put together one of these collages.. hope you find something you like. Just remember — wear it bare! A nice tan won’t hurt either.

Click on each item to go directly to the website.

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…

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!