Sweet Tater Vintage on Mulberry Street in NYC specializes in gorgeous upscale vintage pieces. Every item has been hand-picked by the shop’s two lady owners, from their tours of the East Coast of the US to the side streets of Italy and Greece (with their native aunts as guides). Their adventures in Mediterranean fashion inspired an in-house collection of voluminous dresses, tunics, and tops - all available in three sizes only, designed to flatter all body types (just like in the Old Country).

The Fall/Winter collection this year consists of simple tweed wool and pinstripe suiting, including the outrageously great Duckhunter Dress (above, far left), a fully lined herringbone wool dress with a kangaroo pocket in front and a button-closed “duck pocket” in the back. Because semi-formal duck hunting never goes out of season.

($156, on sale at sweettater.net)

Logo T-shirts have gone through many phases - the product placement tee, the humorously reworked logo tee (FedUp - get it?!?), the completely fabricated and slightly racist logo tee (cough - urban outfitters - cough) - and now, the based-on-a-true-work-of-fiction tee. Last Exit To Nowhere, a company based out of Nottingham, England, promotes invented companies made famous or infamous by the stories they inhabit - and company founder Mike Ford makes sure their logos are poetically suited to the company’s character and context as told in the story. Thus, a logo for “Bladerunner“‘s Tyrell Corporation incorporates a frowning owl - a reference to the scene in which Deckard visits Tyrell for the first time and sees an artificial owl - while Amity Island, from “Jaws”, gets a woman serenely sunbathing on a float in the ocean. It’s a novel idea, one that harkens back to the days where the product placement in fictional works was actually fictional. ($36 at lastexittonowhere.com)

You might have seen them first on E! and Style Network hosting “The Look For Less” show, or as correspondents for Extra during fashion week, or even when they did Jessica Simpson’s first post divorce on-camera interview, but identical twins Chip and Pepper Foster first love is their Chip and Pepper clothing brand. The Company which is now a multi-million dollar venture, was started by the duo back in 1987. At first they created a Canadian sportswear label ‘chip & pepper wetwear,’ and then in 2003 they began their quest to conquer the American markets.

First they launched a high-end vintage inspired denim line that later became the “Chip and Pepper denim.” Their brand has now expanded to include maternity, kids, knitwear, hats, sportswear and leather goods. What I like is their Chip and Pepper University, a knit line incorporating vintage and original logos from more than 75 universities around the nation. The Varsity line is also popular among celebs like Zach Braff, Sophia Bush, and Matthew McConaughey.

The Chip and Pepper brand is available in it’s Flagship stores in New York City’s NoLita neighborhood, Dallas and Newport Beach, CA. Also select department and speciality stores in more than 42 countries carry the line.

For those of us serious about dance - not capital-D Dance in a studio with a bar and a requisite body dysmorphic disorder, but dance! in a space packed with friends, no restraints, no regrets, and no cover - 2 things are essential: amazing music and room to move. Music meaning sick beats that not only make you want to dance, but make you have to dance, and room to move as in hot, free-wheeling joy-clothes and dancing shoes that never hold you back.

See more of my D.A.N.C.E. list at ThisNext.

All virgin vanilla, sweet transparent linen intelligently designed to hide my heavenly body, Anthropologie’s lace tunic  is God’s answer to my prayers—Jesus must have a queer eye for the straight girl named Kristopher, because I feel my holy spirit willing I’d wear this blouse to my first-born bro’s super Christian, super casual wedding in July.

So otherworldly innocent—

It’d go great over fishnets and five-inch heels.

You’re running up to San Francisco, going down to San Diego, heading east to Manhattan, you’re jetsetting somewhere for a fast three days of away play.

Your K’s jealous.

And determined you put that fleece sleeping bag of a coat down, and learn how to pack boss lady things tight like a dude.

...continued: Winter Weekend Away

Holiday season schmoliday season.

The best part of October on is slipping into fur-trimmed boots, clutching vintage mink muffs, sporting lacey tights, and rocking all sorts of other very necessary winter wonder gear. 

Even though 50°F is about as low as Los Angeles chillls.

...continued: Ooh Love Love: Outerwear

Fashion blogs to glossies have been hailing the return of the dress: the little black dress, the sweater dress, the mini dress, the maxi dress.

...continued: Ooh La Love: Get Your Dress On

My So-Called SuperMom Life illustrates a rarely discussed parenting problem: being the parental pioneer.   “It sucks being the first one in the group to have a baby,” SuperMom says.  “Not because for awhile, no one really knows how your life has changed. But because you have to actually buy all your child’s clothes!!! For now, we get no hand-me-downs. Guess this will all change one day…the day that Grace starts wearing my clothes! {sigh} The problems of having to shop haunt me!!! (hehe, did you hear/read the sarcasm in that one!?)”  Actually, SuperMom loves the ‘problem’ but she’s careful about the expense…and she’s got good things to say about the usual suspects, like Children’s Place, Gap Kids and Gymboree … but also mentions Janie & Jack – “classic good looks with tailored English Style” as a good source of comfort and clothing at reasonable rates.

Hey, we’ve all heard the rap about how hemp is the most flexible (and underused) natural material in the world.  The green people at ThisNext have a rival candidate to consider: bamboo. That single tag alone yields a truly amazing array of enviable objects, all made from bamboo.  We’re talking flooring, tableware, kitchen tools, fishing gear, furniture, shirts, and jewelry.  Let’s take a peek…

...continued: Bamboo-a-rama on ThisNext

Shoulda Coulda Woulda is a mommyblog with an edge, and yes, sometimes Mir (writer, copy writer, and mother of two) can get a little controversial, a little over-opinionated.  And she knows it.  But sometimes…  “I don’t want to get into a big political debate here,” she said in a recent post.  “I know a lot of people have very strong feelings when it comes to my subject matter. Where I stand, myself, is immaterial. The truth of the matter is that no matter how you feel, some things are just plain adorable, dammit, when kids do it.” 

This time, she’s absolutely right. (And it’s a great blog, too.)

Okay, this just cracks me up.  Courtney B. of Stylecourt.com has put together a rather wonderful list here called A Bit Jaded, and here I thought it was another set of green picks – ‘green’ as in all-natural products, organic, sustainable, simple, etc.  No.  Not Courtney.  Courtney means green, as in the color.  Like a (great-looking) green tufted chair from Anthropologie.  Green pillows.  Green paperweights.  And some wonderful jewelry all made of jade. And a chartreuse urn, a malachite mirror, wrapping paper and wine glasses.  Here’s ThisNext at its finest: great products, carefully chosen, wonderfully described … and entirely unexpected. 

So what’s your favorite color?  I working on my list right now: my blue Honda, My Blue Heaven, The Blue Beetle comic, “Am I blue?” sung by Better Midler …

In a recent article, NY Time’s Style writes how “Fashion Aims Young” with designers making and marketing trendier and sassier frocks to be rocked by the wee ones.

Which ThisNext can testify to - check our little collection of kiddie chic with our “childrens clothing” tag.

Click the tag, and you’ll see some of what NY Times talks about as going in kids’ high fashion - designer Ya-Ya’s “Kennedy” dress for the little ladies, a businessy button down for little boys, and Antik’s designer denim for kids.

“Premium jeans, for instance, an item coveted by Maisy Gellert, a third grader living in Westchester County, N.Y. ‘I’m very particular,” Maisy said. “Sevens are the only jeans I actually wear.’ “

Maisy sounds like she should be shopcasting children’s clothing with us.

...continued: Fashion Aims Young

Rebecca of The Space Between My Peers is a stay-at-home Mom who loves to blog about fashion “from the bottom of the fashion food chain.” But what great stuff…like this recommendation about zafu.com. “You can just answer an easy series of questions and they will give you recommendations for what jeans will fit you,” she says. “How cool is that?”

Elizabeth is an Op-Ed columnist, a blogger at Parenting.com, and an online entrepreneur, and she keeps all those balls in their air on top of keeping DaMomma up to date. This is a woman who calls ‘em as she sees ‘em in a funny, fast way, and her product pics are part of the process – like these plain-spoken bibs and onesies for babies that tell the awful truth: High Maintenance … Too Freaking Cute … Warning: No Nap. How amazing: truth in parenting.

Grist Magazine is a key resource for green news and information, and the same applies to Gristmill, its blog. You’ll find great insight, recent information, smart opinions, and product recs, like the recent article on jeans designer Tierra Del Forte and her line of eco-friendly denim closes. She uses only organic cotton and is made in sweatshop-free facilities, “and she wants her fan base to know it,” Gristmill says. “From the moment a customer looks at a Del Forte Denim display or peeks at a hangtag, she’ll know the jeans are more than just stylin’.”

Kelly’s Yoga Coffee Outlook is a…unique look at the world, let’s leave it at that. But she’s a woman who knows how to shop for the perfect things to express her personality, including the otherwise-hard-to-describe concept of the Braille T-shirt. Kelly describes it in her own inimitable fashion: “ Wearing one’s like wearing sexy underwear; no-one needs to know your secret, unless you want them to. The raised Braille lettering is printed using high density rubberized ink. It makes the letters stand out. Like rows of very small, cute, pliable nipples. When someone wants to know what it means, you can activate the “anti grope feature”; flip up the front of your shirt, and let them read the translation printed inside, along the hem. Or, just allow them keep groping you. Playing touchy-feely. Whatever seems good at the time; you’ve got the power; feel the love.”

A Brain Like Mine is a great and surprising blog. After all, Valiens isn’t what you’d expect: she’s a self-described neocon in the wild suburbs of New England who also a feminist and a housewife who’s tired of being asked, “With a brain like yours, why are you home with the kids?” She offers “opinion on arts, religion, culture, homeschooling, family life, love, faith, knitting, politics, science, kids, and anything else that bounces my way. Oh, yeah, and dinner.” And also recommends the ancient, revived art of Babywearing as something to look into: “the practice of carrying baby in a soft carrier close to our body as we go about our daily business” as “parenting’s best-kept secret.” It’s a craft and a comfort for mother and child alike.