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today in catalogs
Alloy: The Secret Weapon Of The Broke & Plus-Sized
People, I don't really like discussing certain aspects of my life on the interwebs but there's something you should know: I'm not thin. I'm not use-a-crane-to-remove- her-from-her-house obese, but I can't fit into 75% the stuff I want. Zara is off-limits; Club Monaco is a joke, Benetton makes me weep. But! The teen brands rarely ever let me down. Alloy, I am talking to you: Low prices, larger sizes and the ability to try stuff on in the refuge of my own home. Is it hit and miss? Sure! Is it worth it? Yes. The new catalog has lots of goodies, whether you're a 6 or a 16. Shop with me, after the jump. More »
Designer Impostors
Label Whores: Selling Fake Fashion? Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad
Ever wonder if your H&M dress could pass for its designer original? We do, and that's why we are bringing back Label Whores, in which we sew designer labels on cheap chic clothing and attempt to fake out some of the snobbiest sartorialists out there: big city consignment store buyers. In today's installment, we travel to the "hippest" neighborhoods in New York (East Village, Williamsburg) with four H&M items masquerading as Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Gucci, and Pamela Barish. The results, after the jump. More »
Minding the (wage) gap
Woman To Woman: How To Get The Money You Want And Deserve
The world is not a fair place, I think we all know that. And in this not-fair world, on the average, American women earn 80 percent of what American men earn. When UK Equality Minister Harriet Harman recently called for employers to disclose wage disparities, plenty of people were willing to say that women choose to make less then men in order to spend more time with their kids or to seek less professional, more personal fulfillments. But even beyond the issue of supposed choice, studies by and large show that women don't negotiate on salary as successfully as men for a variety of reasons, which might also contribute to the wage gap. Wondering how to take that particular bull by the horns? As someone who always got hired to break heads instead of be diplomatic, I have some tips. More »
bright future in sales
Five New Job Titles That Are Corporate Code For "Hot Girl"
This will shock you, but apparently some women get jobs at hedge funds solely on the basis that they are hot. “You meet these bimbos and they say, ‘Oh, I work at a hedge fund,’ and you think, What?!?” one "head of an investment bank who pals around with high net worth investors" tells W Magazine. “And then you realize, Oh, this is, like, the PR girl. And it's a wildly successful strategy." Yeah, sure, until the only women working on Wall Street are brainless bimbos because all the smart women have been driven away by the financial sector's overpowering, self-destructive atmosphere of misogyny…oh wait. Anyway, the story — while it's annoyingly absent of internal memos detailing illegal hiring practices or, for that matter, pictures of any of these hedge fund hos — reminded me how, no matter which way the economy blows, the American workforce, since the days of flight attendants in hot pants, has always found a place — and a visa! — for a sufficiently hot girl. In fact, as those hedge fund gurus are well-aware, opportunities have never been brighter! More »
home as hell
Why Do Women Insist On Buying Houses?
"The scariest money mistake women can make (Hint: It's not shoes!)" sure sooounds like your average "Hey, it's O.K.…" Glamour enablement missive. (This month: Hey, it's O.K… to think about your eBay bid during sex!) But actually, "Welcome To My Mortgage Hell", penned by Meghan Daum, who knows a little bit about money mistakes, is interesting/depressing/important. Women, particularly single women, are addicted to acquiring real estate. "You use your home as a way to express who you are," says one lawyer and expert. Like shoes! But this is a newer development: until the 1970s single women were rarely allowed to buy homes without somehow proving the veracity of their intention to never have kids; today the rate of homeownership (or, you know, "ownership") among single women — single women who've been taking on half-million dollar double adjustable-rate crackpot mortgages with no down payment and that sort of thing — is twice that of single dudes. But why? More »
consumption junction
Do You Own Your Stuff Or Does Your Stuff Own You?
Laura Miller has a piece on Salon today titled "We Are What We Buy." Miller talks to Rob Walker, who has a new book, Buying In: The Secret Dialogue Between What We Buy and Who We Are and we find out that 77% of Americans think that they are perceptive when it comes to marketing pitches. Walker himself was one of them, until Nike bought Converse. "His cherished hipster/underground brand had been swallowed by the Nike swoosh, 'a symbol for suckers who take its 'Just Do It' bullying at face value.'" Miller writes. He'd bought into the notion that Converse was about a certain non-conformist individuality. And don't we all? There are subtle signals emanating from the things we buy. It's tough not to judge someone by their Crocs, Juicy Couture or Abercrombie. Some products don't technically advertise with huge campaigns — they sponsor events or associate themselves with certain groups instead — still are thought of in a certain light, something Walker calls "murketing." More »
american appar-hell
American Apparel CEO Orders Subordinate To Pleasure Herself; She Services Him With Lawsuit
Perhaps you've heard enough out of American Apparel Chief Executive Onanist Dov Charney. He masturbated in front of a reporter, sleeps with his employees, promotes hot 17-year-olds to replace veterans, took himself public in one of the shadiest entries to the public markets in the history of financial engineering, told the Wall Street Journal the CFO hired to straighten up his finances was a "loser," and generally perpetuates the kind of working environment I'd vilify as the Worst Thing Ever if I didn't kind of respect that he owns the largest remaining clothing factory in the country. Okay, so…he got sued again, this time by three year company veteran Jeneleen Floyd, after going completely batshit in a Perry Edward Smith-esque fit of preordained craziness one day. An eyewitnesses says the catalyst for the outburst appeared to be a combination of anxiety that his L.A. factory would be the target of an immigration raid, and fury over his Wikipedia page, which has since endured quite a few revisions, including a few at the hands of his right-hand woman Iris Alonso. How not to manage people, in a few simple clauses, after the jump. (And yeah, there's sex.) More »
today in catalogs
Translating The J. Peterman Catalog
In all honesty, I thought the J. Peterman catalog was dead. I remember it as something I used to read on the toilet in high school, and later heard the people on Seinfeld joking about. So when I went over to my mom's house and saw it on the table, my jaw dropped. It is the same as ever: A noble attempt to inject romance into getting dressed. Telegrams, full skirts, Lady Margaret, Paris anitique stores, sunny India — no dream is too far-flung to sell a dress. In fact, it's easy to forget what is actually being shilled. We parse Peterman's pitches on a few choice items, after the jump. More »
today in catalogs
Make Memorial Day Memorable With Tacky Crap From Fingerhut
Bad news, you guys. This could be my FINAL CATALOG! Then where will I turn for the sheer tastelessness that only Fingerhut can offer? The long weekend approaches and the catalog has some key items to make your Memorial Day and awesome day. Or at least: A day. Lawn ornaments, cubic zirconia and grills (the kind you cook with), after the jump. More »
today in catalogs
Summer At 'Free People': Crafty Crocheted Crap, At Twice The Price Of Thrift Stores!
The May Free People catalog has arrived, and its "global" aesthetic has gone all '70s California girl. But the prices the company is charging for some of this retro boho? Enough to make your ironed hair curl. Oh, and here's a question: Is it okay to have a "Tibetan Festival dress" in a catalog called "Free People"? Overpriced pseudo-homespun "worldly" wares, after the jump. More »
monkey see
Every Time You Eat A Doughnut, An Orangutan Dies
The adorable apes you see at left may be homeless because of your junk food habit or your hair conditioner. The problem? Palm oil. As Glenn Hurowitz explains in the Los Angeles Times, palm oil "comes from the disappearing, ultra-carbon-rich rain forests of Indonesia and Malaysia, of which a whopping 25,000 square miles have been cleared and burned to make way for palm oil plantations. The burning releases enough carbon dioxide into the air to rank Indonesia as the No. 3 such polluter in the world. It also destroys the last remaining habitat for orangutans." We've previously posted about palm oil in Oreos (dammit!) and Girl Scout cookies (crap!), but, Hurowitz reports, it can also be found in many other foods: Entenmann's chocolate-covered doughnuts, Chewy Chips Ahoy!, Orville Redenbacher's popcorn, Hershey's Kisses "Hugs," and Twix. Oh, well, that stuff isn't healthy anyway, right? More »
sephora spy
Can Foundation Really Be Waterproof? (And Other Details About The Next Generation Of Expensive Beauty Products)
Sephora Spy is back! Fresh from "SOS" training — it's the OT-8 of Sephoraologists! — our undercover Sephora operative Jasmine takes a turn for the scarily-technical this time around. Waterproof foundation! Hyaluronic acid! Uniforms like something out of the Starship Enterprise! Dimethicone-based foundation primers! And so much more. Estee Lauder and Revlon are just two fading giants in a Brave New increasingly multi-polar world of secretive $65-tinted moisturizer-peddling prophets like Perricone and rising giants exhausting the world's mineral supplies. Your questions answered, after the jump. More »
today in catalogs
5 Hideous Things Urban Outfitters Wants You To Wear This Summer
The Urban Outfitters Summer catalog has hit mailboxes and there's a world of ugly inside. Oh, not everything is hideous, but there are a few things — sure to be seen on your local hipster — that just seem cringe-inducing. High-waisted shorts, lacy underwear as outerwear, Soviet-era shoes? The offenders, after the jump. More »
today in catalogs
UnderGear: No Boxers, No Briefs... From The People Who Brought You International Male
As previously noted, the International Male catalog is being phased out. The new company is UnderGear.com and thankfully they've sent out their Summer 2008 issue. I sent an IM to Anna that read, "I'm worried that this catalog is NSFW." She asked, "How so?" Then I showed her a sample. She wrote back: "Haaha! That's fine! If a woman in a string bikini is SFW then that is. God I just LOL'd." But there's something about photographs of men's underwear — especially when you can kind of see their junk — that's kind of naughty. So! Proceed with caution as you enter the world of Undergear, after the jump. More »
photo shop of horrors
French (Photo Retouchers) Don't Let Famous Women Get Fat
Remember the horror of that almost-unrecognizable atrocity at left? Turns out we can blame Pascal Dangin for that. Dangin, you see, is what writer Lauren Collins, in this week's issue of the New Yorker, calls "the premier retoucher of fashion photographs", a onetime hairdresser who so believes in reincarnation (symbolic, not metaphysical) that, when he moved from France to the U.S in 1989, he chose the first very flight out of Charles de Gaulle airport on the very first day of the new year.
Many women are transformed by Dangin's computer stylus, which sits in a basement laboratory at "Box", his four-story, Manhattan Photoshop fortress: In addition to Drew, there is the trophy wife with the "flat" face and "short" legs; the shoulder blade found "in a recent project at W"; the cast of the Sopranos; Prada models; "a famous actress in her late twenties"; a "crunchy"-faced model; "another well known actress"; "an actress with a movie coming out this spring"; Kate Moss; models Liya Kebede and Raquel Zimmerman; Madonna. And then there is model Christy Turlington, who, Collins explains, "needs the least help".
More »
jezenomics
7 Reasons This Is Not A Recession
Surely you've heard by now but we'll pat our aching, aging backs one more time because we're just so elated — America is NOT IN A RECESSION! The American Gross Domestic Product actually grew last quarter, which was a huge disappointment to the whining Marxist doomsayers so intent on making Americans forget they are living in the greatest civilization that ever danced with the stars. Well, we've seen the data, Americans. We've scanned the fine print and scoured the blogosphere so you wouldn't have to, and we are here to tell you: it's true. The American economy grew last quarter, and we know exactly why. So don't listen to the haters! In lieu of the usual evening news roundup, Jezebel is here to bring you the seven reasons this great nation is still on the upswing. More »
obamacrombie chronicles
