More Random Etsy Items

I love the idea of etsy, but have yet to actually buy anything...
maybe one of these will be the lucky winner. All items selected
from the very useful Etsy gift guides.



Ginko trees are rather beautiful this time of year in Berkeley.
The leaves have all turned yellow, but haven't fallen to the
ground quite yet. Fun fact of the day: apparently the seeds
from female ginko trees are quite smelly (like rancid butter) so
if you're walking by a ginko and a foul odor is emanating the
tree must be a she. Ginko necklace.


Another hand painted item, Punk Grrl bracelet.


A beautiful hammered silver Wave Ring.


Holiday Shine White Peyote Cuff

Kitschy Cute!

Susie over at StyleBubble, recently pointed out these amazing hand painted shoes on etsy from NDEUR. You send the artist your shoes and he hand paints the design of your choice onto them. No worries about the shoe not fitting since you get to pick them out yourself!


These shoes are absolutely fabulous! They remind me a little bit of the Tokidoki LeSportsac bags that came out a few years ago. While the bags seemed a little young and a bit much for me (I would have to wear a really plain outfit to get away such a loud bag), I think on a shoe the effect would be somewhat lessened by being way down by the ground and out of your direct line of site. And, you get to own a piece of one of a kind art work! Very kitschy cute!

Site of the day

ShopStyle.com is my new favorite site for online shopping. They
index items from tons of retailers around the web for your shopping
pleasure. Here's a cute Calvin Klein patent leather shopper that I
found with a search for "patent leather" which turned up 880
matching items from shops as diverse as shopbop, macys, bluefly, liz
claiborne and many, many others.

LBD exhibit

Ok this is the last museum exhibit post for awhile, I promise... The
Brighton Museum and Art Gallery is hosting an exhibit dedicated
every girl's must have item, the little black dress.

I think Brighton is a little far from London where I will be staying
for the first half of my European shopping extravaganza... but we
shall see.


From the museums website:

Brighton Museum celebrates the contribution of the Little Black
Dress to women’s lives with an exhibition charting the history of
this iconic garment, curated by leading fashion designer Andrew
Fionda (of the label Pearce II Fionda).

Designers from haute couture to the high street have contributed
dresses of all kinds. Many have personal resonance for the rich
and famous.

Star items include
* Ben de Lisi’s red carpet dress for Kate Winslet
* Julien MacDonald’s flowing creation worn by Victoria Beckham in
That Extra Half Inch
* Anouska Hempel’s dramatic puff ball, modelled by Hilary Swank in
Tatler
* stage costumes from 1930s musical star Adelaide Hall, and
Brighton’s 21st century drag celebrity, Dave Lynn
* favourite outfits of Zoe Ball, Joanna Lumley and Joan Collins
* a John Galliano design donated by Lady Sally Albemarle, a regular
on best dressed lists in New York and London

Asian Art Museum

And while we're on the subject of fashion art exhibits,
there's one right here in San Francisco on contemporary
Japanese fashion that I've been meaning to attend for
quite awhile now. Maybe I'll have time to check it out
next week when things settle down at work a little bit...

From the Asian Art Museum Website:

Japanese fashion: It’s more than meets the eye.

Conceived by acclaimed artist Hiroshi Sugimoto, this special
exhibition spotlights the sculptural essence of contemporary
Japanese fashion through the works of Rei Kawakubo, Issey
Miyake, Yohji Yamamoto, and others. Debuting alongside the
21 innovative creations of these celebrated designers are four
never-before-seen black-and-white photographs by Sugimoto
that capture the garments’ shadows, lines, and fullness of
form.

On view exclusively at the Asian Art Museum, this is the first
major exhibition to combine the collective talents of such
leading Japanese fashion luminaries with new work by
Hiroshi Sugimoto, one of today's most compelling artists.

The garments—borrowed from the Kyoto Costume Institute,
one of the world's leading repositories of haute couture—date
from 1983 to 2007, and include a range of materials and
methods from various seasons...all "with textures, colors, and
shapes worthy of definition as sculpture."

Les Arts Decoratifs

There is an exhibit at the Musee des arts decoratifs that
I am hoping to view while in Paris this January/February.
It sounds quite interesting and I have never been to this
museum before so it should be quite a treat.

From the museum website:

EXHIBITION
Christian Lacroix.
Histoires de Mode
8 November 2007 - 20 April 2008

The Musée de la Mode et du Textile invited Christian
Lacroix to become the curator and historian he wanted to be
when he studied art history at the Ecole de Louvre before
embarking on his internationally acclaimed career in haute
couture. For over a year, he immersed himself in the museum’s
collections of costumes and accessories. The result is an atypical
exhibition in which Christian Lacroix gives us his own personal
vision of the history of fashion. For a few months the garments
he selected from a heritage stretching back over several centuries
will encounter the haute-couture creations of one of the greatest
names of French fashion.

Banana Heels

Another Prada item for today. I'm not usually a fan of gradient colored clothing,
but there's something about these Prada Banana Heel shoes (Sfumata Pump)
that I can't get out of my head. A friend of a friend is going to Vietnam later this
month and plans to visit the Prada factory there. Fingers crossed that he'll stumble
across a pair of these... although I'm not sure they're in production anymore.



If that doesn't work out, Shoewawa recently posted that the
high street versions are coming soon....