Zahra Saeed

Gah, I love this White Lotus dress by Zahra Saeed. I guess I usually don’t take most stores directly on Rittenhouse Sqaure seriously, because they always seem like places to outfit a child, Pomeranian or overpriced condo of privilege, and I have none of the above. When I’m (window) shopping, I generally don’t venture past the Barnes and Noble on Walnut Street.

But I’ve been missing out, apparently. Philadelphia Magazine did a story on the Moorestown designer’s second collection, and I was super impressed.

The Pakistan-born Moorestown resident (whose personal history includes an arranged marriage, a divorce, and moving her way up the corporate ladder at a South Jersey mortgage bank while raising two daughters; she self-financed her fashion business) is constantly inspired by the fabrics she finds around the world. And with the wholesale success of her eponymous lines throughout Europe and the Middle East, she sees quite a bit of it.

While I generally appreciate color and pattern more, and there are quite a few pieces in the collection that use those fabrics from around the world extremely well, what I especially like here is what this woman can do with plain ol’ white:

And what’s more, she has a way of keeping balance when employing interesting silhouettes and structural bits so that the wearer looks like she’s wearing something neat that you haven’t seen before, but doesn’t look like she got lost on her way to the Met Costume Ball (OK, the one on the right’s a little bit Swan Lake costumey, but I still like it).

I’m not gonna lie, though: her website doesn’t work very well (at least, not on my computer), and if you click “home” you’ll get blasted with unwelcome music. Whatever. Just wander past the Barnes and Noble next time, and check out all this gorgeous stuff from a for-real local designer.

Zahra Saeed, 1905 Walnut St.

Broad and Market

Have I mentioned how pleased I am that Maggie, of the street-style photography blog Broad and Market, came back from Japan and started shooting Philly again? The blog has been back and regularly updating from Philly for a couple months now, but every time I try to post on it I remember that there’s some event that night I need to mention or some or Chase Utley hits another home run and I forget… but now!

What I especially like about Broad and Market is… well, you know how there was that funny flowchart about How to Get Shot by the Sartorialist over at Refinery 29:

The Sartorialist, while it certainly is great and what street-snapshot fashion blogs everywhere aspire to be, kind of has a type. I was briefly considering starting to do something similar as an occasional feature for this blog, with the brainstormed title being “OMG, your outfit is amazing!” Not “something I would wear”or “something that looks like it came out of Vogue,” although those wouldn’t hurt, but more like “not something I see every day, and you clearly made an effort to make it that way,” although that title is a little long.

That’s the reason I like Broad and Market so much: I ended up scrapping the idea for a great many reasons, but I feel like Maggie does almost exactly what I would have done. Because while the photo I started the post off with would probably ring the Sartorialist’s bell, there’s also this guy:

And this lady:

And of course this lady, too:

Which: not something I’d wear, nor something that would be in Vogue. But it’s definitely not something you see every day, either.

Say what you want, but there is so much amazing layering and pattern/color play going on here – plus dreads, eyebrows, and the custom baseball cap. If you click either image, you can see the extra huge version for all the little details. For real, who picks out a fitted pastel-quilt pattern hoodie and rocks it like that? This is real good.

Exactly!

J.Karma and Career Wardrobe

Reasonably-good-cause alert!

From J.Karma Boutique, at 62 N 3rd St. in Old City, there’s a donation drive for Career Wardrobe with an added bonus:

November 2nd starts a MONTH long accessory drive for work appropriate shoes and handbags which will be donated to The Career Wardrobe, a non-profit organization which provides free work appropriate clothing and workshops designed to educate and inspire women returning to the workforce.

From November 2nd thru November 30th, J. Karma will be accepting much needed donations to benefit this important cause. During this time, please stop by and donate your gently used work appropriate shoes and handbags – we will also be accepting scarves & jewelry.

In exchange for your generous donations, J.Karma will offer a coupon for $10 off your next purchase of $50 or more OR $20 off your next purchase of $100 or more.

Arright, so $10 off $50 and $20 off $100 are kind of sneaky not-real-coupons, like those standardized Banana Republic/Gap/Express/whichever-mall-store sales in which you always run around trying to find something that’s exactly $5 to go with that $45 skirt and end up buying more than you would have (or maybe that’s just me), but!

The Career Wardrobe is a legit good cause, and I don’t think it’s going too far out there in feminist-land to say that it takes far more effort and money for a woman to outfit herself for most living-wage jobs than it does for her male counterpart, and that on top of that, women tend to be judged more than men on how they dress at work. Like, say you only have two or three work-type outfits and one pair of shoes: way less likely to be noticed if you’re a guy.

So even if you’re not in the market for a new pair of shoes, you might consider the Career Wardrobe when you clean out your closet for the season.

But if you’re looking to take advantage of what they’re offering, here’s some things we like at J.Karma at the moment, in addition to the Melie Bianco bag at the top of the post:

Short and tall boots by Jeffrey Campbell.

Bubble ring by Marlyn Schiff.

…more boots by Jeffrey Campbell. What can we say, we like boots.

The boob bail-out program

I’ve expressed my love for Coeur before, but I thought this sale idea was pretty cute. And I’m seriously in need of a new bra.

Coeur: 132 S 17th St.

Previously: How I learned to stop worrying and love the boob

Jay McCarroll’s Germania @ Spool

Designer and South Philly resident Jay McCarroll, who (as I’m sure he’s sick of hearing) you may remember from season one of Project Runway (in which he turned down the first-place prize of $100,000 because of a creepy clause that entitled the Weinstein company to a 10% interest in all his future ventures, forever), has been teaching at alma mater Philadelphia University and producing some pretty adorable retro-ish fabric prints.

Spool has his latest line of fabrics, Germania (if you look closely, a lot of the prints involve fuzzy little spherical monsters with two fangs and one googley eye, which I love), and they’re using them in their Stitch Party this Friday from 5-7.  FYI.

Spool: 1912 South St., open 11-6 Wed-Sun

P.S.: I have nothing interesting to report about jury duty, they let me out before lunch. I didn’t even get disqualified, they just didn’t need anybody in my 50-person group. Here’s one thing: you can buy ramen bowls, oatmeal, chicken noodle soup and Chef Boyardee Beefaroni at the jury-duty vending machine. The woman in charge of my group was very nice. That is all.

girl.bike.dog.

I was wandering around the weird triangle area around Grace Tavern this weekend, trying to recall where the hell I had parked my car the night the Phillies beat the Dodgers, when I wandered into the storefront of girl. bike. dog., at 23rd and Bainbridge.

The titular dog. His name is Vince.

The store sells a mix of store-made bike stuff and dog stuff, and, looking at the website, offers dog-walking services, which I didn’t notice when I was there. It opened the storefront this June.

The beer cozies, which come in standard and 40 sizes, can strap onto your bag or your bike so’s you don’t have to ditch your drink just because you’re ditching a party.

I asked whether the lack of traditional foot traffic at 23rd and Bainbridge was a problem (because seriously, the streets can get a little deserted down there during the day). The answer was that the foot traffic wasn’t as thick as on Walnut, but that the people who DID walk by tended to be on their way to the dog park at 25th and Spruce, and thus more likely to be interested in some of the dog accessories like the collars above.

They have a selection of messenger bags in the store (the one on the above left was made of a fallen billboard), and they also do custom stuff (below).

Top tube protectors:

They’ve got a blog, too, and when I looked it up, I was somewhat startled to find several pictures of my little sister’s boyfriend at the Wild Wild West race, 2008, and shooting a rifle in the woods with the store’s owner? Hee hee. Hi, Eric, you just turn up everywhere I look!

King of Jeans

Photo by flickr user stellaoella

King of Jeans, according to whoever Philebrity’s unsourced “rumor mill” is, may be closing. Sad face.

If you’re not familiar, King of Jeans is an clothing store down in the Passyunk East neighborhood that always seems a little surprised to notice that the block is now full of people in tight pants; it’s notable for having one of the most bizarre, Patrick Nagel-ass sign I’ve seen outside a West Philly salon. It is also the namesake of Philly band Pissed Jeans’ album “King of Jeans.”

There is a quote from a 2008 South Philly Review story on a new boutique on Passyunk East that would suggest the store is suffering in the economy:

Issac, a manager at King of Jeans at 1843 Passyunk Ave., who did not want to give his last name, said staying open is a great idea in theory, but in his experience, it just doesn’t work.

“I tried later hours and it hadn’t really been working,” he said. ‘We’re in a recession where people have a limited amount of funds. I wish them luck because anything that works will benefit all of us. It’s better to have a store than an empty store. Maybe they could start a trend.”

We called King of Jeans for comment but it rang twenty times at noon on a Wednesday and we gave up. Not a good sign?

TrickGo Boutique opening tonight

If you’re in need of something to do tonight, check out tonight’s opening of TrickGo Clothing’s new brick-and-mortar digs on Antique Row.

TrickGo Clothing is a small clothing company based out of Philadelphia. It was started by Matt Trigaux in his tiny dorm freshman year of college. …

TrickGo was started in January 2008. It has deep roots within the Philadelphia creative community and strives to create limited edition, graphic tee’s and accessories. TrickGo is intentionally kept exclusive and is only available online and in a few select boutiques across the country.

What’s the most adorable, though, is that Trigaux is kind of an American Wet Dream of an entrepreneur. He makes a point of mentioning in most ads that he only recently started TrickGo from nothing on his top bunk as a freshman at UArts (there’s more pictures of the early stages on his about page), worked hard drumming up internet business, got his T-shirts into boutiques and now has enough money to open his own store, although some of the designs might get you heckled at a teabag party:

Next step: getting some minimum-wage employees to work 25 hours a week. We kid! Next step is trading complicated financial products based on life insurance, because that worked out really well with mortgages.

Also kidding there. However, we do wish this guy luck. You show everyone the power of capitalism, kid!

Oh, and speaking of politics, I guess everyone clapped their hands enough? Thanks, state legislature, for FINALLY PASSING THE BUDGET. We do, we DO believe in fairies! And now, to rescue Wendy!

Looking for pin-up girls

OK, most press releases tend to be boring, overly enthusiastic, full of irritating buzzwords or all of the above, but we got one recently that actually looks super neat.

Varga Bar, named after the 40’s style pin-up artist Alberto Vargas, is about to search for real Philadelphia women to pose for the first-ever 2010 Varga Bar monthly calendar.

George Anni, owner of Varga Bar, has partnered with photographer Christoper Gabello (www.christophergabello.com) to recreate the traditional pin-up girl images with a modern twist. Interested women will send 2 photos and 3 sentences answering the question “why should you be a Varga Girl?” to makemeavargagirl@gmail.com.

Ettore Salon and Spa is going to be styling all models’ hair and makeup, and wardrobe will be provided by Old City’s Smak Parlour boutique from their new lingerie line.

Interesting! So you’ve probably seen Vargas Girls before, they look like this:

The lady at the top of the post in the towel is the first one in Varga Bar’s series: Jessica, Miss January. My initial reaction was “OMG I’m totally entering this, how neat would it be to have a cheesecake portrait of myself? It would be my facebook profile photo as long as I live!” Then I was thinking… “Uh, actually, you’d be a really terrible model, and you’re kind of short, small-breasted and stubby on top of it.” Then I settled on why the hell not.

And frankly, you should settle on why the hell not too, women reading this, because seriously, why the hell not. Let’s give them a lot of different body types to choose from, because knowing the modern pin-up genre, which tends to be accepting of different shapes, they’re probably not looking for 11 identical wearing-a-sparkly-party-top-in-Old-City-type girls. I’m gonna enter, anyhow.

Learn more about Alberto Vargas, who had a neat life, here.

Verde

pictures courtesy Emily G's crappy old phone, this is what happens when you let friends take your camera on vacation, ugh

On my continuing quest to find somewhere not down in South Columbus big-box land where I might purchase cilantro seedlings*, I ended up at Verde, a shmancy urban garden/chocolate shop in the Gayborhood space where Robin’s Books used to be.

It’s the fifth place on that one block of 13th Street owned by Marcie Turney and Valerie Safran; with Verde plus Bindi, Lolita, Open House and Grocery, the two of them have the equivalent of all the purples and oranges on the Gayborhood Monopoly board.

I liked this place quite a bit for a few reasons:

1. They sell plants that are still alive, unlike most Center City places at which you can only get em cut; they also stock stuff one needs to take care of plants

2. They carry a bunch of large, nice-looking, enviromentally friendly pots in bright colors that are surprisingly inexpensive for their size (that is, under $10; plant pots, like couch pillow covers and trash cans, fall fully in the category of “things you discover are annoyingly expensive when you accidentally turn into a bourgie“)

3. They had a really pretty terrarium display, although those were pricey

4. Really awesome-looking artisanal chocolate being made in a little glassed-off area in the back so customers can watch. I did not try any myself because it was spensive and I’d just eaten, and I neglected to take pictures because I was excited about the terrariums, but if you happen to be walking by it’s totally neat to see the process of chocolate making. And there’s an interesting bit from the Daily News’ Joe Sixpack about their offerings:

They’re carrying a sixpack of truffles made with local beers, including Nodding Head Grog honey peanut crunch, Philly Brewing Walt Wit pink peppercorn and Lancaster Strawberry Wheat caramelized cacao nibs.

Man, I should have taken a closer look at the chocolate! I may have to go back and check that one out.

I may do a terrarium post in the future, because I just made a couple and I’m liking them a lot (you don’t have to remember to water them nearly as much, for one), but until then this design sponge one on how to DIY is excellent!

Verde
108 S. 13th Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215.546.8700

*For whatever reason, cilantro is the only plant thus far with which I have had an unbroken series of failures both inside and outside; if anyone has any insight on why all my seedlings die or where I could buy some pre-started cilantro in Philly PLEASE tell me in the comments because it is key to making my favorite beans.