On the left, a pretty woman in a complicated shawl sneaks home from a party late at night. And on the right, it looks like her pissed-off girlfriend has been waiting up with a plate of spaghetti. If shawl-girl is as guilty as she looks, that spaghetti is about to fly right at her head.

And, as promised, here's one more Mohr.
Remember this?

I've never really understood the thinking behind this kind of piece. I mean, I do, people read them, but they're fundamentally idiotic. Would I like to look like Audrey Hepburn or Jackie O? Um, yeah. Do I? Six inches and an empty bank account say No. That said, I totally get the attraction to the idea of taking something really complicated, like self-expression, and breaking it down into a few simple rules.

A few people have written to ask if I have some tips along these lines. This has prompted me to dole out the one piece of practical fashion advice I will ever attempt to dole out, ever. If you don't want to read something kind of FashMag, avoid the bracketed portion below. Because, as it happens, I do have a tip. Wait for it.

Know your era. Learn this and you've done half the work.

If you go through the major fashion eras of the 20th C, you'll see that different silhouettes and body types were in vogue. Find the one that matches you. (I guess if you want to wear a toga or something that's your prerogative too, but I'm limiting this to the past century.) I'm not saying go around in costume; rather, modern fashion is so friggin' PoMo that every shape is referencing some era anyway, and it's possible to come across virtually any shape in the current marketplace. Skinny? 20s and 60s. Curves? Go for 50s, sexy 70s or 80s. It's not rocket surgery, as my beef would say, but it's foolproof.

I, for one, am a 1940s and a 1970s. The high-waisted trousers and fitted shapes of those eras just work for me. (And sure there are multiple styles within an era: I'm talking more Network than caftan.) I'm too short for the volume of the 50s and too curvy for mod or flapper. What's more, my curly hair and glasses works with these shapes. This is not to say this is the era to which I'm most attracted: if I could do some streamlined Jean Seberg thing, I'd do it in a second. But two little things called breasts have always gotten in my way. In any case, I like the limitation; it makes choices way easier. I'm not saying you can't experiment, but if you want a formula, that's the best I know. ]

I also think it's a pernicious myth that everyone needs to cultivate some earth-shattering 'personal style' look. You don't, any more than you need to excel at archery or confectionary. Very few people have the skill. Unlike these things, however, everyone does need to wear clothes, so you might as well find what works for you. It's hard nowadays because there are so many cut-rate versions of every absurd high-fash trend, each one presenting the appearance of fashion virtuosity in a mass-marketed $15 package. And ironically enough, this preoccupation with fashion icons, and modeling ourselves upon them, seems to have grown apace with the galloping low-end ready-to-wear market, that's done as much to homogenize our aesthetic as McDonald's has to ruin our diet. No wonder InStyle's lame quizzes sell. I remember being totally overwhelmed when I was younger not just by the pressure to look okay but to somehow express my interestingness and creativity via what I wore, and the best advice I can give anybody in my capacity as former horrible dresser, bespectacled woman and retail professional is to ignore what my mother calls 'the herd of independent minds' screaming at you to define yourself, choose an era and keep your head down. Fashion is not particularly accessible, but clothes are. So begins and ends my glorious career as service piece writer - but I do hope that helps!

Star Style Profiles [InStyle]
Related: Getting Back In Style [WWD]

The skirts are now popular enough that they outsell women's capris, shorts, and pants at New Balance, and they have their own seven-city race, called the SkirtChaser. Even men get into the act.

Armstrong writes that "one of the best things about being a woman today is that we have so many options. Whether we are in the boardroom, on the home front, or on the starting line, we can bring it on like a man, but it doesn't mean we have to look like one." To my mind, however, the skirt option sucks. It doesn't help that Armstrong never mentions any real comfort advantage, or that she felt self-conscious the first time she put one on. It certainly doesn't help that Runner's World includes a skirt guide that looks pretty much like any ladymag's tips for hiding your figure flaws, including the "very slimming" New Balance Flare Skirt and the prAna Sugar Mini Skirt, whose name looks suspiciously similar to the phrase "pro-ana".

But my main objection to running skirts is best expressed in the sidebar "A Dissenting View," by Ginny Graves:

I couldn't quit thinking about The Skirt. It looks better than I usually do when I go running, but that was part of the problem; my "nice outfit" meaning more aware of my appearance — the last thing I want to be distracted by when running.

I don't want to look cute while kicking butt. I would like kicking butt (or "slowly flailing," which is what I actually do in the pool), to be one of the few activities in life when I'm exempted from looking cute. Then again, I'm not a runner. Those of you who do run, would you try a running skirt? Better yet, has anyone done so already?

The Rise of Skirt Culture: Skirt Reviews And Fit Tips [Runner's World]

Here Lucky mixes an oddly blunt headline with its traditional euphemistic style. Which is it, Lucky — nasty all-caps BIG LEGS or nice polite "issues around the hips and thighs"? Either way, the answer is apparently a dirndl.

But other parts of your body can also be BIG! You've heard what to do if you're pear-shaped, top-heavy, or curvy — what if, like Erin Hinkle, you're tall and thin, but think your "shoulders are disproportionately wide"? According to Lucky you should "draw attention toward the center of your body" and away from those unsightly growths that hold your arms on.

If you're now reeling from all your newly discovered figure flaws, the Shoes of the Month are here to put things in perspective. These lovely yellow ballet flats are "the kind of shoe you live in" — a helpful nod to those Lucky readers who are old, and who have so many children they don't know what to do.

This is like that scene from Zoolander where he goes home to his dad and brothers at the mine with snakeskin luggage and a garment bag. Except these two are trying (desperately) to fit in. But the one on the left is wearing a $1700 coat while the one on the right is wearing $375 jeans. Oh, sure, you're ready for hard labor.

She may be all oiled up and "working it" but are those boots appropriate for the factory floor? Asking because of the heel, not because they're $380.

"So I says to him, I says, Phil, you can't make an omelet without breakin' any eggs, yaknowwhatImean?"

Working hard or hardly working?

"With the lights out, it's less dangerous."
"Here we are now, entertain us."
"I feel stupid. And contagious."

This is not going to end well. There's going to be a screwdriver in her eye and whatever is in those pipes is sure to leak onto those Dolce & Gabbana boots. Oh, by the by, this entire ensemble is $1793. In this country, a factory job pays about $30,000. You probably bring home only $21,900 of that, meaning you make $1825 a month. So you'd have $32 left over — or $1.06 a day — to eat with that month if you purchased the clothes pictured.

Didn't Rosie the Riveter have a wee bit more muscle in her arms?

"Haha, isn't it fun to pretend to be blue collar?" "OMG totes, I'm gonna eat Hamburger Helper tonight. Kidding! I've got a reservation at Masa."

Jeremy spoke in class today.

Earlier: Marie Claire's "Outlaw" Look: $13,000 Gown & Black Lipstick
Marie Claire's Vietnam Photo Shoot: Apocalypse Wow
Marie Claire's Oh-So-Realistic Trailer Park Photo Shoot
Marie Claire & The 75-Year-Old Bhutanese Model
'Marie Claire' Editors Went To Italy And All They Got Was This Awesome Photo Shoot

• You, too, can look just like Kim Kardashian! The professional rich person, TV personality and cattle-driver is auctioning off a personal styling session to benefit Russell Simmons' Art for Life philanthropic event. Which is very laudable and all — but does nothing to explain why Kim's fashion savvy has already fetched a bid of $1,000! [LA Times]
• Justin Timberlake, reluctant muse, didn't want to be the face of William Rast. Unless, you know, he was in character. Says a Rast creative director: "We came up with this idea for him to play a role as this guy named William Rast. So it isn't meant to be Justin, it's Justin playing a role, as an actor. When we explained the idea, he instantly loved it and got really into building the profile of this character." [WWD]
• Correction! Kitson says that rumors that Victoria Beckham's men's denim line has been pushed back are 100% false and that the collection will appear at holiday time as originally scheduled. [New York Magazine]

• Naomi Campbell: "I'm not a bad person...I'm blessed to be able to do charitable work and good things but no one focuses on that because I don't throw it in people's faces." [E!]

• Naomi's also doing another bizarre SoBe Life Water ad. This time dancing to "Black Magic Woman." [Fashion Week Daily]
• Is Bravo deliberately sabotaging Project Runway? Folks have been noting that the normally ubiquitous posters have been MIA in the run-up to the show's final season before departing for the dowdier waters of Lifetime. Bravo execs say it's to preserve contestants' "anonymity" but such scruples have certainly never troubled them before...[Fabsugar]
• We have to wait a endless day for Project Runway to start. But the Australian version has already begun! As one of the commenters puts it, "the one guy with the hair reminded me of a smaller, nicer, less irritating Bobby Trendy." True, true. [Oh No They Didn't]
• eBay bests Tiffany in landmark ruling over counterfeit-policing responsibilities. [WWD]
• As Scott said, the rich are different from you and me. "Like the husbands who pay the bills — anything from £50,000 to £150,000 for an elaborately jewelled creation — these women don’t give tuppence for the avant-garde. They want a waist where God intended; they don’t want flashes in embarrassing places and are bemused by garments with three sleeves. They want everything just as it always has been — at least, since the 1950s. And Paris couture survives by meeting their needs." [The Times]
• More about Dubai's new "Fashion Island", aka "Hell." [MyrtusWe recessionistas like consignment shopping! Despite its "stigma." [Star Tribune]
• In case you were wondering: Jessica Stam, the 22-year-old model known for dating both Flea and DJ AM, has now hooked up with Huey Lewis' son, Austin Cregg. [Oh No They Didn't]
• Stock upgrade dramatically boosts Macy's shares. [WWD]
• Converse debuts the video for its much-hyped Julian Casablancas-Pharrell Williams-Santogold single, "My Drive Thru." The Times of London calls the song "a three-headed Frankenstein's monster of coolness." I'm keeping mum. [Brand Week]
• Wanna predict the market? Watch the runway shows. "Although designers always dismiss the correlation between skirt lengths and financial markets as a fashion historian's fantasy, the parallels are striking. Up went hemlines to dizzying heights in the financial and social whirl of the roaring 1920s - revealing women's legs for the first time in recorded history. Then came the bear market and bare was out - except for low backs on the floor-length gowns that dropped hemlines just before the 1929 Wall Street crash." Is it a coincidence that designers are quite literally tightening belts for fall? [IHT]
• Liberty prints take the high street. [ElleUK]
• It happened on this date: 1997, Gianni Versace murdered. [US News]
• Claudia Schiffer for Ferragamo. [Models.com]
• And for Dolce and Gabbana! [fashionista]
• Lauren Conrad on snubbing Marc Jacobs: "I met Marc Jacobs when we were filming and I got so nervous when I saw him that I didn’t really know what to do. I was trying to act cool, but I didn’t even stand up to shake his hand. I actually came off a little bit too cold, like I didn’t really care and I felt kind of bad. I get really starstruck over really random people and designers." [New York Magazine]
• British biker label Belstaff to outfit Batman. [ElleUK]

• Sadie defended fashion from hateful Wintourish anti-heroes.
• We told Seventeen's constructive criticism and eyeshadow advice to suck it.
• Women's magazines "saved" Cathy Alter's life.
• But not ours.
• Dodai revealed her secret passion for juniors fashion..

• Tracie slayed the "emotional conquistador."
• Lamb cums all over Gwen Stefani's face!
• We were fondly embarrassed by our fathers.
• It's thankfully, oh so thankfully Friday! So enjoy your Cocktails n' Dreams and have a fantastic weekend

• Poor Posh. After the embarrassingly poor sales of her denim line and ensuing abandonment by retailers, we hear that her men's dVb line has been pushed back "until next year" by L.A. boutique Kitson. Plucky Posh is undaunted, having spoken of her desire to launch a couture line and show at New York's fashion week. dVb denies the line is floundering, claiming that "it is currently being manufactured but is likely to reach stores later than anticipated." [This Is London]
• A man has confessed to the murder of Canadian model Diana O'Brien, whose body was found last week in Shanghai, where the 20-year-old was on a 3-month modeling contract. 18-year-old Chen Jun was arrested Friday morning in Anhui province; he apparently killed the model during an armed robbery of her apartment. [CNN]
• Gwyneth Paltrow is really slacking in her obligations to Estee Lauder's new "Sensous" perfume, refusing to show for any of the hundred ridiculous promos the company's set up (opening the stock market, anyone?) and leaving the burden on the slender shoulders of co-pitchwomen Hilary Rhoda, Carolyn Murphy, and Elizabeth Hurley. Recriminations all around. [New York Magazine]

• Seems the Nuclear Wintour has thawed for Obama: the fashionista was on the newly-published list of "major donors" to the Dem's campaign, indicating that she's raised fifty grand or more. [Neew York Times]
• Wait, fashion, and bloggers...petty? Hard to believe, but it would seem that style sites Fashion Indie and Coutorture are engaged in the most ridiculous war of words (and pictures) ever. Says The Pipeline, "in our years of reading and writing for fashion blogs, this is as mad a skirmish as we've ever seen." [Pipeline]
• The CEO of Overstock.com, that online retailer with all the insinuating "Big O" commercials, has decided not to sell fur through his sites. “You don’t have to think about it very much before you realize … you’re completely objectifying an animal when you say I’m going to wear it as a decorative object. That’s over the line for anyone who gives it any thought, I would think,' said Patrick Byrne, who's made waves in the past for his "battles against hedge funds." [Reuters]
• Are low necklines responsible for Marks and Spencer's market slump? Some suggest that the chain's base of older folks has been alienated by attempts to appeal to a more youthful demographic. "The clothes are not suitable for our age group,' says one older lady. "The dresses are too low on top and they don't have sleeves. They just show too much cleavage and at our age we can't wear that sort of style."' [Independent]
• Charity "Clothes Off Our Backs" latest fundraiser is selling off Rodo shoes. The twist/catch? Celebs like Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett, Sheryl Crow, Kirsten Dunst, Zooey Deschanel and America Ferrera have each decorated a pair "as they chose." Apparently not everyone finds these words ominous: Pink's pair has already racked up $400 in bids; the heels Kristin Davis decorated have scored a more modest $170. [EOnline]
• Next up for Target GO!: Purses by Monica Botkier, coming up next week, and a jewelry line by Dean Harris on 8/17. We've not had great luck with the designer accessories lines in the past, but hope springs eternal in the breast of Recessionistas. [The Budget Fashionista]
• "Black is best when you're in court/The judge will be impressed!" That's Singin' In The Rain. This isThe Daily News on Christie Brinkley's courtroom choices :"The media-savvy former model - who's tried hard on the stand to argue she has been a perfect wife and mother - has picked crisp button-down shirts smoothed into sharp pencil skirts for her divorce trial against estranged husband Cook. Call it the Serious Woman's Uniform - and a smart wardrobe choice when you're up for a fight. "It's not threatening, that's the bottom line," says fashion commentator Mary Alice Stephenson. "The pencil skirt is a piece of clothing that all women respond to."" [Daily News]
• New York consumer confidence at all-time low. [Crain's]
• Super-scrawny menswear designer Hedi Slimane will be the cover model for the debut of Vogue Homme Japan. Said Kazuhiro Saito, editor in chief of Vogue Nippon and the new men's spin-off of Slimane's aesthetic, '"There were those very skinny, boyish male models. That works for Japanese guys."' [WWD]
• The public asks Tim Gunn ten really asinine questions like, "What movie or TV cast has had the biggest impact on fashion?" He makes it work. [Time]

For the past five years, ever since winning a fashion contest in the town of Divo, the designer has catered to an ever-widening circle of celebrity clients drawn to her garments' muted colors and rough-hewn appeal. The designs, whose sophisticated lines attest to Mai's formal fashion school training, deliberately draw on the inescapable realities of her country's past; as a tailor, her father, whom she cites as a major influence, catered to a French colonial clientele, while the cowrie shells Mai incorporates as accessories were a form of currency in the days of the slave trade. When a motif or influence is explored in the mainstream fashion world, it is generally abstracted, and when a designer does attempt commentary (see: Donatella Versace) the results are often cringe-inducingly self-serving. It's exciting to see a franker response to an immediate influence: this is what fashion can do, at its best.
Cocoa Catwalk: Sacks Are Sweet For Ivorian Designer [Reuters]

Ivory Coast Fuel Hikes Seen Hurtint Cocoa Farmers [Reuters]

Most items mentioned are available in sizes XS-XXXL.

This stuff is not just for teenagers! Wear the dress to work with a cardigan; the trench with trousers. Pretend you didn't see those pre-torn jeans.

These are the jeans that you should wear with the previous trench. Plus: The Karmann-Ghia is my dream car!

Cotton blouse with lace inset! Under $32! Actually, everything on this page — except for the pre-torn jeans — is pretty great. And that includes the vintage luggage, which, sadly, is not for sale.

While all of these are cute, your best bet is the Sackrace dress. Cotton. In white or black. Up to XXXL. Forty bucks.

I have this dress. I get so many compliments on it. It's so crisp and easy and looks cool with silver bangles and gladiator sandals. Highly recommended; now on sale.

Skinny jeans! I know they are much-debated. I think they can be slimming. You may disagree. But check this out:

Wide leg, trouser cut and boot cut. From sizes 1-25. Awesome fall colors. All under $40.

More dresses! I've already ordered that drop-waist one on the left. I'll let you know how it goes.

The top and the dress are pretty great. Ixnay on the eansjay and the ootsbay.

I also ordered this blouse. Cotton! 35 bucks! I'll pair it with a pencil skirt and the kooky oxford heels I got at Payless.

[Alloy]

When I was first approached about this guest-blogging job, I worried I wasn't qualified. Although I've always loved fashion and been fascinated by how people choose to present themselves, I'm no fashionista. I follow high fashion the same way I do the Mets: as an amazing art form that doesn't have any relationship to my everyday life. Someone commented yesterday, "Jen was sophisticated and relevant. You are not." I can't pretend I wasn't terribly hurt, but at the same time, I knew the commenter was essentially right. At the end of the day, I'm just a goofball who likes clothes, and I’d certainly hate to pretend otherwise.

I don’t come from a fashionable family. In my house, it was understood that clothes were frivolous, a mere means of keeping warm, on a par with trashy TV and Babysitters Club novels. My mother, a feminist and intellectual, frequently spoke slightingly of those “self-absorbed” women who devoted themselves to grooming and clothes rather than the life of the mind. When we did our annual school shopping, it was at the Salvation Army. Fashion, when acknowledged at all, was regarded as patently absurd: sinfully expensive items made for and by pretentious morons who perpetuated dangerous beauty ideals.

Although I dutifully got in line with my family’s morally superior attitude, from an early age I was secretly drawn to the world of clothes, reveling in dress-up and doll fashion, and noting the outfits I saw on the street. Of course, I was ashamed of these shallow leanings. I remember snaking clandestine peaks at the Vogues in the dentist’s office, marveling at the beauty of the clothes even as I gaped at their prices.

In a sense, my mother could afford her principles; hers was the sort of natural beauty that needed no adornment. But as I grew up, it became clear that I had not hit this genetic jackpot. Whereas my mother’s height and lean lines looked dashing even in sweats, I, five inches shorter and considerably curvier, looked dumpy in the same clothes. Where her straight, thick hair looked elegant after her $20 Supercuts trims, my own curls turned into a frizzy mushroom. And if her high cheekbones and natural tan didn’t need the enhancement of nature, my pallor and pale lashes most certainly did.

As I moved into high school, I knew I looked awful, but I literally had no idea how to go about fixing it. Even if I had, I didn’t have any money and was dependent on my parents for transportation. Asking for funds for clothes was unthinkable; I’d have died before I let on that I was any less high-minded than they. I pretended scorn for the girls in my school who wore artfully applied makeup and dainty, expensive clothes, yet I yearned for their sartorial ease.

When I got a bit older, I started thrifting on my own and experimenting with clothes a bit. I began to learn the structured shapes that worked for my body and to realize that even if I loved the idea of something, did not mean it was for me. More importantly, I had a major revelation: it takes as much time and effort to buy clothes that look bad as something that fits and flatters. As long as one has to wear clothes, there is no reason you shouldn’t spend that energy wisely. I ran across a great quote in a Georgette Heyer novel: “Of course there are more important things than clothes. But not when one is getting dressed.”

I was helped along in this by a naturally stylish friend who, although a serious scientist, took tremendous, unashamed pleasure in putting together the exuberant looks that were her trademark. Clothes were, for her, a means of expressing her creativity, and she did so unashamedly. I came to see that my dismissive moral indignation was no more admirable a stance than revering labels for their own sake. Both are, essentially, a form of judgmental intellectual arrogance.

Late in my teens, I took a part-time job at an antique clothing store. It was a revelation to me. I became fascinated by the artistry and history of the garments, their function and workmanship. For the first time, I came to understand the point of couture – an evolving art form with real-world reflections and ramifications. This is not to say that I started saving for labels; such a thing has never been within my means and I found too much about the world of privilege surrounding fashion unappealing to ever want to be part of it. Unlike most art forms, high fashion has a highly accessible and practical alternative – a cheaper version for the rest of us – and this is inherently alienating. However, I grew to love the clothes as objects in themselves, and found observing their adaptation to real life to be fascinating.

I had a hard time articulating these evolving ideas to my family. It was simply not within my mother to enjoy any form of physical self-expression; she had defined herself for too long as someone who didn’t care about how she looked and to challenge this would have been to undermine a great deal of who she was. She viewed my ever-more elaborate outfits and increasingly expensive haircuts with growing incredulity. When I got a weekend job in a high-end boutique, I could tell that it baffled her.

Then one day, I realized that I cared about clothes. A lot. I thought about them the same way I did the books I read and the movies I loved. It seemed to me amazing that one could transform oneself willfully – that everyone has this much control over how they are perceived in the world. A lot of my friends still found this interest frivolous, but came to see that it didn’t compromise anything else – and, from my perspective, broadened and deepened my interests.

So, when the opportunity came to guest-blog here, I decided to do it. I knew that I couldn’t set myself up as an authority; just try to share my enthusiasms, talk about the way real people dress and, if possible, do so without unkindness. When my mom called me this morning to tell me she’d been enjoying what I wrote, I can’t tell you how happy I was. Oh, and we made a date to go shopping.

After all, what distinguishes a job from a career is the ability to leave it behind you when you get on the subway. What's more, I've always relished the strict line that divides my chaotic reality from the the hyper-organized universe of the store. At home, I subscribe to the "floor-drobe" school of organization. Garments comingle in squalid anarchy on the floor, chairs, bureau and closet. Underpants dance in jubilant heaps in drawers; bras prance from the edge of the mirror. When I do manage to impose some order — on laundry day, perhaps — my piles are flaccid and asymmetrical, colors and styles impudently tangled. I once had a therapist suggest that the chaos of my personal surroundings are a response to the tight control I exert over my relationships. Personally, I prefer to believe I had a large staff in a past life.

Don't get me wrong: I can fold with the best of them — and without a folding board, mind you. Outer thirds of a tee rigidly marshaled, sleeves turned in at a 45 degree angle, and then the final letter-style flip. [Will you come over to my place sometime soon? I'll pay for the pizza! -Ed.] I can do this in a single fluid motion, 'dropping' the tee into a perfectly symmetrical rectangle. If called upon, I can do the 'Japanese folding technique,' a kamikaze-like flick of the wrist that actually doesn't save time, but looks awesome. And my piles! Ruler-straight, color-coordinated wonders. Jeans? Even thirds, facing left. Anything on a hanger is leftwards, too, in ascending size order, carefully marshaled into sections organized by color and use. I love the novelty of this organization, the imposition of order on chaos — but largely because I don't do it at home.

There have been moments when I've looked at my heap of clean laundry, mounded in its old-lady cart, and resolved to do it right this time. But from the first fold of my faded tees, I know it's a futile effort. Ownership to me means comfort. In my drawers, my clothes have no one to impress, no need to sell themselves. They have earned their rest. To subject them to such contortions would only serve to emphasize how old and tired they are. The rigidity of a store is artificial — especially a soulless behemoth like the Gap — and while I appreciate organization, it seems to me curious to swallow a corporate conception of perfection so fully that anything less seems lacking. It strikes me as a generally positive thing that a higher percentage of Americans are doing time in retail — if nothing else, it teaches you to always leave a dressing-room neat. But the homogeneity of the corporate retail ethos obviously plays to obsessive tendencies in the overly-neurotic. One can't help but wonder if McDonald's employees bring this kind of zeal to their home life, or whether Bloomingdales employees enthusiastically spritz their families with clouds of perfume. It would, in its way, be no less absurd. But whatever the larger implications, one thing is clear: "Fall into the Gap" is less an enticement than a threat!
Excuse Me, Do You Work Here? No, I Just Need To Fold Clothes [WSJ]

Look at how happy they are! Not a care in the world! I want what they have! And by that I mean $45 skinny jeans.

Cardigans are my life. Winter, spring, summer or fall. With dresses, pencil skirts, A-line skirts, jeans, sneakers, heels, evening gowns and pajamas. $39.50? I'll take one each in berry, black, oatmeal and heather gray, thanks.

Oh, and one of each on this page.

Whoa. Pass. They can't all be winners.

Even if you live in a place called OverThirty, as I do, and therefore probably won't wear this stuff, you can appreciate that there's something refreshing about these images. It's almost enough to quell a jaded soul.

Each one of these darling summer dresses is under 35 bucks. You're welcome.

Happy happy, joy, joy.

[Delias]

Fall is coming! Time to hunker down in your non-existent off-the-grid cottage and figure out a way to eat when you've spent all your cash on clothes!
We The Free bomber jacket, $248; Wild At Heart dress, $228; Barolo buckle boot, $498.

Ew. Really, there's not much more to say. I'm tempted to write something about the way impoverished (non-Western?) people wear items of clothing and put certain ensembles together in an effort to just be clothed and not in a fashion-conscious way; and we shouldn't romanticize paupers; how it is important to remember that new, unworn clothing for style purposes is a privilege not everyone on the globe is lucky to know, but really, when it comes right down to it, "Ew" is a more appropriate statement to make in this particular situation.

You have to wonder if the woman on the right knew what she was getting herself into. Was she paid? Is she a model now? Ah well, this catalog loves using people as accessories.

Looks like someone stood on the breadline and actually got bread! The difference between dressing like a Hans Christan Anderson fairy tale and living one is that the Little Match Girl could never have afforded those $498 boots. By the by, you can get a first-edition HCA book for about the same price.

Wow, schoolgirl-gone-wild. How innovative. And expensive!
Buckled up menswear dress, $148; pleated skirt dropwaist skirt, $88; diamond pointelle over the knee socks, $24.

While mixing patterns can be bold and beautiful, this combination is annoying and jarring to the eye. Plus! Does this look like a $500 ensemble to you? It's $456 not including the tights or the boots.
Road to discovery top, $68; pleated camp skirt, $98; dripping knit scarf, $78; ribbed surprise over the knee socks, $24; Scouts charm necklace, $188.

Attention people who hate skinny jeans: Look at what is coming down the pipe. Are you happy now?

These "rugged herringbone pants" are $98, but the unflattering crotch and thigh area is free with your purchase.

How much for the couch?

Really? Seriously? Dear Free People: Your "vision" for fall makes my eyes hurt.

[Free People]

Earlier: Anthropologie "Vignettes": Forcing Us To Look Forward To Fall
Free People: Someone Watched The Darjeeling Limited Before Booking This Photo Shoot
Summer At 'Free People': Crafty Crocheted Crap, At Twice The Price Of Thrift Stores!

As in any grass-is-always-greener scenario, the clear-cut sartorial guidelines of an office often appeal to me. There are so few rules for dressing nowadays that the idea of a formulaic office dress code stands out as a bastion in a world of sartorial anarchy. It's also true that I think I never had to think less about what I wore than during my stint in the corporate world: blouse, pencil skirt and slingback made for a reliable uniform. Plus, having a job makes it way easier to justify buying clothes.

Nowadays it's another matter. It's a cliche that those fortunate enough to work from home (and believe you us, there are trade-offs) do so in pajamas, and like many cliches it's rooted in truth: your fashion standards atrophy as quickly as your social skills. When polled about their at-home workwear, my Jez colleagues mentioned muumuus. Lack of bras also loomed large. (In case you're wondering, Velvet and Built by Wendy were both cited as good 'blogging muumuu' sources.) In my own case, I favor the sort of papery house coat customarily sported by obese Italian matrons over the age of eighty. My source is an ancient shop run by two equally ancient brothers in an Italian section of Brooklyn, and believe you me, on a hot day nothing breathes like a snap-front cotton sack.

However, since starting my guest tenure as a fashion blogger, I have made a conscious effort to bring my game up a bit. It just seems the height of hypocrisy to critique other women's fashions while sporting boxers and my Mr. Met tee. [Let's! Go! Mets! -Ed.] So, I've instituted rules for myself: I must be fully dressed when I start working; be wearing makeup; and, if at all possible, a bra. As to clothing, I still use lounge wear, but it must be one of the new caftans I recently purchased on eBay, or else silk lounging pajamas (okay, polyester children's pjs from Chinatown, but still) or a kimono. And, whenever possible, a turban. If this seems both arbitrary and needlessly vain, let me just say that the self-employed resort to all sorts of peculiarities to get through the day, and dressing like a crazy old woman is mine.

But back to the business costume. I went to a recent college alumni event in my summer business costume (a vintage sharkskin dress, pearls and cream heels) and was approached by an older alumna. "Are you from Staten Island?" she asked me. "Or New Jersey? I only ask because no native New Yorker dresses up that much for work; I figured you were from the outer boroughs." Clearly the costume needs further researching.

Okay, I'll admit it. The Teen Vogue way to wear this plaid D&G trench coat, which is not priced and probably won't be in stores until the temperature drops below 95, looks a lot more fun than the "run"-way. Maybe because the D&G way is…well…for starters, orange is a bad color for eyeshadow and…it looks like it was styled by the department of the Pentagon that conceives all the propaganda in charge of turning Americans against people wearing headscarves. (Or wait, Victoria Clarke!)

Behold: the punk pencil skirt, brought to you by Marc Jacobs. Everyone knows how Marc Jacobs invented grunge, but not everyone realizes he was one of the co-founders of punk as well. That is why his plaid at $238 is so affordable compared to Dolce & Gabbana's; he wants the kids to be able to pair his pieces with their $230 vintage T-shirts and $296 "Blue Blood" backpacks! He is like Ian McKaye in that way.







These are my personal faves. Doesn't it look like she just stepped out of a 1992 Mandee? Well except for the top part, which probably would have been a bodysuit. And she should probably be wearing a choker. I can't find a price tag on these House of Holland pants but their their website makes me want to kill myself.

This is an awfully sweet dress that my boobs will never fit into in a million years. Shall we focus on the (adorable, affordable) hat instead?
Quotidian dress, $168; flora fedora, $48.

Yeah, wide pants are back. Do you own a single tuckable top? Me neither.
Addeo cardigan, $118; Cobblestone wide-legs, $118.

If you can wear that sweater dress, you've got less to work with in the hip and thigh area than I do. Kudos. And please note that the sweater from the cover is really borderline crazytown spin-art.
Mazzola sweater dress, $148; Soutine cardigan, $118.

I like the tights, the skirt and the shoes. The jacket thing is not working for me. And I hate to act catty and stabby but I sort of want to punch this woman. Not the model. The "character" she is playing. Who wears stuff like that and stands like that. Fuck off.
Hope & Union jacket, $188; Sufi skirt, $128.

Ooh la la! I love this. I love cardigans! And inverted pleats, and stripes, and cute skirts, and those shoes. I always want to dress like an "insouciant ingenue," but I think if I wore this it might come off as "spinster schoolteacher."
Pisacane sweater, $118; Sweet Life skirt, $148.

There's so much hideosity I don't know where to look. At the bird, I guess. He seems to have crapped all over that dress.
Double-button sweatercoat, $128; Summer tanager dress, $158.

People keep saying that ugly is the new pretty but this shit has got to stop. I just can't get behind this pageboy on LSD thing.
Cropped button trousers, $188; Veery heeled loafers, $118.

Sure, on this model, this coat is floaty and feminine. Anyone else will look like a demented escapee from a summer theater production of Tartuffe.
Dove's flight sweatercoat, $188.

Purple peep-toe pumps? Pretty please!
Parula peep-toes, $398.
My mom would like this dress. She loves butterflies. I am not so inclined. It is not my steez, as the kids say.
Whimwing sweaterdress, $248.

Why yes, that is a mouse nestled in that shoe. This is what passes for "quirky" at Anthropologie.

Violet trenchcoat: Want.
Plum perfect trench, $268.

[Anthropologie]

Earlier: Urban Outfitters, Free People & Anthropologie: What's The Difference?
Pottery Barn, Anthropologie & West Elm: Bedding Porn For Sleepyheads
Anthropologie "Giving": We Love To Hate & Hate To Love It
Please Do Not Look The Anthropologie Model In The Eye
Anthropologie Doesn't Care About Black People

Over the weekend a successful young fashion model touched off a minor media circus by killing herself. Almost immediately, details of the beautiful life cut tragically short swooped in to fill blanks; the apocryphal tale of her "discovery" by benevolent industry scouts; her melancholy poems; how she'd been watching "Ghost" the night before. It was mostly bullshit. But there is something about great beauty that inoculates us to the more mundane realities of life, which was that Ruslana Korshunova was an immigrant from a desperately poor country who came to New York at a scarily young age to make money to send back to her parents. In that way she was no different from the tens of thousands of kids from former socialist states whose parents send them thousands of miles to work in restaurants and gas stations. It's generally more legal, and the living conditions a little nicer, but as our anonymous model columnist Tatiana has discussed before in this space, the people governing a model's fate are no less predatory and self-interested, and the experience is only slightly less anonymous. Herewith, Tatiana's initial thoughts on the suicide of a pretty girl from Almaty:

At around 2:30 in the afternoon on Saturday, a 20-year-old model named Ruslana Korshunova jumped from the balcony of her ninth floor apartment in New York's financial district. A Kazakhstani of Russian heritage, she had modeled since the age of 15; top London agency Models 1's Debbie Jones tells a great story about her discovery and tracking-down of Korshunova after seeing her pictured at German club in an in-flight magazine. (I suspect Jones is spinning a typical fashion creation myth: Korshunova told UK Elle magazine that when she was 15, she submitted her own photos to the Moscow agency iCasting, a version somewhat shorter on romance and international intrigue but vastly more believable.)

Korshunova followed the usual career path of an Eastern European model — working abroad from a young age to send money back to her parents, who remained in Kazakhstan — albeit with considerably more success than is common. A slight 5'7.5" with braces and Rapunzel-esque hip-length hair, Korshunova nonetheless shot out of the normal model demi-monde of sometimes sweet, sometimes snide, always obsessive commentary on TheFashionSpot.com. She wowed casting agents and booked a slew of clients during her five years in the business. Korshunova worked for Marc Jacobs, Blumarine, Vera Wang,
Paul Smith, DKNY and Moschino; she booked a cosmetics campaign for Clarins and starred in a Nina Ricci perfume ad. She shot with Mario Sorrenti, Patrick Demarchelier, and Paolo Roversi. She had covers for European editions of Vogue and Elle, she had pictures inside American, Japanese, and Italian Vogue. Korshunova, it appeared, had grabbed fashion's brass ring.

She had achieved the kind of career that must have been reasonably consistent, and decently-paid, though of course pursued in total anonymity — even her doorman told the New York Daily News he didn't know the girl he saw return home at 5 a.m. on Saturday was a successful international model.

No doubt this is a story made more interesting in the eyes of some by the allure of Korshunova's profession. Journalists have already taken to calling Korshunova "the beauty," "the lithe looker," "the 5'8" head-turner," "the green-eyed blonde beauty," playing the fashion industry's own exoticizing, objectifying game. On Fox news - where else? — Geraldo Rivera showed "the last images" Korshunova. The camera lingered over her dead body — pale, bloodied, and partly covered by a sheet — while Rivera in a voice-over called Korshunova's ex-boyfriend's description of the model as "a good person" a "kind of a lame quote." I am not linking here on purpose.

It is as a woman, not a mannequin, that I'm sure Korshunova's loved ones will remember her. And irrespective of her field, one has to wonder at the process by which a girl decides to kill herself four days before her 21st birthday.

I did not know Ruslana Korshunova, but I do know something of depersonalization and loneliness of this profession, and its occasional outright miseries (Korshunova also told UK Elle, of her worst professional experience, "We were in the Alps shooting, high
up in the snow, and I was wearing a tiny dress. We were so very cold and it was snowing so hard — we couldn't see a thing. I thought I would not live to see another day.") The Daily News reports that Korshunova wrote long messages in English and Russian on a social networking site; the messages make frequent mention of things like love, desire, dreams, and rainbows; they
read as the missives of a very young girl who has discovered that romance often fails to live up to its promise. Korshunova quoted inspirational Internet poetry about the importance of forgiving quickly, kissing slowly, loving truly, and laughing uncontrollably, which the Daily News apparently mistook for her original work. In March, she wrote, "I'm so lost. Will I ever find myself?" In her most recent post, on May 30, she mused angrily that "Love does not take away from one in order to give to another."

Korshunova spent her last night watching Ghost with her ex-boyfriend, 24-year-old Ukrainian immigrant Artem Perchenok.

Many models would have envied Korshunova's career; many women would have envied her beauty. But clearly, leaving home at 15 to travel the world under the often-lax in loco parentis care of a series of agencies, even when it culminates in a nice Craig McDean editorial and a Dior Beauté campaign or three, can take a devastating toll.

Here's one to wear when you're doing your editorial assistant thing.

Ooh, and to your second job, waitressing!

For your weekend retail job...

And working after hours at that gallery opening...

Babysitting your boss's kids...

Selling stuff at the flea market...

Freelancing from home...

...and, of course, pounding the pavement!

Images via Nylon

This is the Santa hat he showed up with at Christmas, which he says is actually a camauro and shows up in papal portraits in the Middle Ages! He's making everything old somewhat less ancient again!

Here his is in his traditional shiny Mass clothes... but just look at his snazzy red loafers (not made by Prada, he swears!) peaking out from underneath! As long as your shoes don't clash with your golden vestments and pointy hat, it's ok to use them to make a fashion statement!

Here, Benedict is taking a page from his predecessor's style book, but he makes it his own with a shiny little scarf and — you guessed it — his red shoes! Since he's hosting George W. Bush, look how they reflect Bush's Texas roots to make him feel more at home!

[Images via AP]