In celebration of the remodel of its Off 5th Outlet store in Woodbury Commons, Saks Fifth Avenue invited a bunch of bloggers a week back to take a tour of the store. Woodbury is about an hour’s drive from New York City, and is known for the high-end, designer names it attracts, including Balenciaga, Gucci, Prada and Tory Burch ( which has velvet ropes outside its store for crowd control purposes!).
The Off 5th store looked great, with an open air, spacious feel to it that makes it easy to shop. Overall, its shoe department is its biggest draw, offering a wide range of the poshy-posh designers (yes, the above image is of THOSE Chanel boots) it sells in its full-priced doors, but at a deep discount. The handbag department was also well stocked with juicy items, and the contempory department is highlighted by a Rag & Bone line, created exclusively for Off 5th. We were mesmerized by the shoes (I snagged myself a pair of Cole Haan sandals), but for accessory lovers, there’s a very large department set up right near the entrance that has a lot of tempting items, especially watches.
See shots of Miu Miu, Camilla Scovgaard and Burberry shoes on the next page.
“Rap beast” Kreayshawn gives us her take on the current state of style in a song titled “Gucci Gucci,” whose chorus states: “Gucci, Gucci, Louis, Louis, Fendi, Fendi, Prada….the basic bitches wear that shit so I don’t even bother,” and concludes, “All you basic-ass hoes out there, man, I got rooms full of bad bitches, they don’t need Gucci, they don’t need Louis, they swaggin’….aaay.” Truer words.
CFDA held a party celebrating the 2010 award recipients last week and Ann Wintour (also in the image above are Eddie Borg, Billy Reid and Prabal Grunung) was in attendance, wearing a Prada skirt featuring the highly-celebrated banana print that has taken the fashion world by storm. The party took place at J.Crew, which will be collaborating with Billy Reid, the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award winner, on a capsule collection.
A couple more images on the next page of fashion favorites Kate Lanphear, plus Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez.
Prada is having quite the lasting moment, with its recent collections receiving enviable amounts of editorial coverage and showing up on multiple covers. U.K.-based WAH nails, ever in step with the latest, pays its tribute with this perfectly executed banana manicure, featuring the print shown in the Spring 2011 collection. Well done, ladies!
It’s always interesting at least for us to see the format in which brands and retailers choose to present themselves in their retail space. Luxury retailer Harrods tapped the Shed design firm ( also did Prada) to create an art deco inspired space entirely devoted to shoes, launched earlier this year:
We explored what quality of service meant back in the Art Deco period,’ says Matt Smith, Shed’s director. ‘Rather than copying elements from the era, we wanted to break the style down, understand it, and then reinterpret it.’
On the next page a closer look at the shoe salon via Frame.
Forever with its eye on projecting itself artfully, Prada has commissioned three illustrators to interpret the “Minimal-Baroque” collection of sunglasses from the Spring/Summer 2011 womenswear collection in a series of drawings to be used as part of this season’s campaign. This is an entire personal quirk I realize, but for whatever reason, I have never been a fan of fashion illustrations to the point where they even irritate me! That being said, some of these are quite nice, though that just might be because the collection itself was not only strong, but very graphics and color oriented so it translated well to illustration. Via Dazeddigital.
Photographed beautifully, Garance Doré features Shala Monroque, whose style and pizzaz we find thourouhtly inspiring. Full look on the flip of Shala after the Prada Spring 2011 runway show. Notice the Josephine Baker inspired earrings! Style is in the little things people…
Anna Wintour will be profiled on “Bloomberg Game Changers,” at 8pm est tonight. Interesting how Wintour has been spending a lot more energy raising her profile it seems ever since The Devil Wore Prada. Perhaps she looked around the landscape and concluded that being a celebrity is a part of doing business these days. If you want to watch, it’s being shown on Bloomberg Televsion, which, as much reality TV, basketball games and various and sundry other junk I watch, can’t say that channel rings any bell so good luck with that. To be honest, based on the preview it doesn’t look all that juicy, with canned comments like, “Anna is the single most influential person in the world of fashion, etc, blah blah.” A lot of people mindlessly repeat that line, but really? Is she? She’s the editor of one magazine that receives very mixed reviews in the fashion world so I’m not so sure that’s accurate. Via Racked.
Stripes are ever present this Spring and as much as we love Prada’s lovely interpretation, these Tabitha Simmons sandals can definitely stand on their on as simply fabulous. Available at Matchesfashion.
Coming soon from Prada are its “Paillettes” handbags, inspired by the very coveted Spring 2011 collection, in which stripes were a big theme. Take a look the next page courtesy of Prada.
