Alexis Bittar likes old ladies

Lauren Hutton, Joan Collins etc. Now, that old lady from queens who wears her whole jewelry box at once and has the biggest glasses anyone has ever seen.


http://fashionista.com/2011/07/alexis-bittar-is-collaborating-with-iris-apfel/

So yeah...match made in heaven? Hell?

'Pick Another Checkout Lane, Honey'

With recession friendly coupon clippers being featured on the majority of daytime TV, I can’t help but find myself frequently very annoyed and with more than a few questions on the subject and its future.

You see, I used to be a cashier at one of the great Canadian hypermarkets. You could always tell when a coupon lady (or man) was coming. First, a sea of yellow bulk sized no-name products, canned goods galore, junk food, cleaning products up the ying-yang and very few fresh fruits and vegetables (beyond cheap stables like bananas, potatoes and carrots) make their way down the belt. You catch a glance of him or her unpacking their load, a stack of glossy papers and thick cardboard ferociously gripped in hand. The death grip is obviously necessary, you see, why efficiently unpack your groceries when you'd be leaving your valuable coupons in plain sight for anyone to steal!!! N00bs with only a few coupons shuffle through their 2 or 3, covering them in sweat, making the corners soft; this has been an obviously anxiety ridden ordeal for them. Hopefully they will learn their lesson and stop. After many awkward, tense, price related moments and arguments (breaking into your ring time and your chance at weekly giftcards!), the calling of managers, the slowing and stopping of lines, the wasting of time of decent, complacent folks, comes the total. They look at it with a sick smugness, then demand points for this and that, pay with multiple giftcards acquired on previous trips, credit cards with extra airmile-cashback-new blender points, and OH AND I’VE BROUGHT MY OWN GREEN BAGS 30 of them must have that’s 3000 pts plz!!! Of course they’ve only got enough groceries to fill 5 or 6, but they earn 24 * 0.05 cents in cash back= 1.20 $ so it’s worth it, to them. Don’t bother arguing, your job is hard enough.

If you live in a hole, you might ask, who are these coupon clippers and how much are they saving? Joanie Demer( seen below), also known as the Krazy Kupon Lady has filled 4 carts with a retail value of $638.64 and after coupons paid $2.64. That is a 98% savings! Yeah sure, but this woman coupons as a full time job (is it really saving money when you could be making it elsewhere?), spends all her time in dumpsters, actually putting her children in harm’s way while they aid her in her coupon salvaging.





The inundation of positive reactions to these women and these shows just doesn’t compute for me. These people are not cute; they’re not clever. They are awful price checking, nagging, whining brats who argue their way into heavy discounts and free items. There is no principle of the matter operating behind arguing that eggs are 2.97 not 2.99 in order to get them free under Canadian scanning code of practice. This is a voluntary code which most stores follow which says that if the price of an item under 10 dollars scans differently than the one on the shelf, shoppers get the item for free; if it is more than 10 bucks, they get 10 dollars off.

Let’s summarize so far. A, it’s a full time job and B, it makes you a terrible person who takes up the precious time of other people. Indeed you’ve taken on a full time job which is something akin to that of a telemarketer. But let’s continue...

These people buy a lot of new fangled crap and gimmicks and flavours that never seem to stick around for more than a short while. The amount of petrochemical shit they stock up on ( more glade air fresheners than would be needed to cover up the smell of the Mithi river in Mumbai), sugary drinks, canned goods, cleaning products...yes the things they buy have long shelf lives, but they’re unhealthy and I guarantee a great deal won’t be touched before their expiry dates, if they are ever used. Though they'll tell you otherwise: "Oh I never buy things I don't need or want". Come on. They want everything as long as there's a coupon for it.

It’s not to say that I don’t realize that some people need to find ways to stretch their budgets (students, the elderly, the unemployed, yours truly etc.). And it’s not that I don’t get that food prices are up overall, though 1.7% ( according to stats Canada) hardly makes me shiver in my boots. I don’t like cheap, but I get it. I love sales, I get sales watching. What I don’t get is the agony of collecting coupons, wasting other people’s time, knowing that the products are very often not things that you want or need in the first place.

I guess my biggest question is if this whole extreme couponing thing catches on, won't manufacturers just have to back off and stop offering deals? Won't stores wanting to save the time of their other customers ( and themselves), stop accepting coupons or put in place maximums?

I don't know, but I kinda hope so.

L'Autre Chose

Replace one ‘O’ with an ‘A’, add a ‘C’ and the name Alfredo Boccaccini, becomes Alfredo Bocconcini...cheesy goodness. Of course there is absolutely nothing cheesy about anything Boccaccini has put his name on.

Since 1959 his family-run business has been making a name based around exotic leathers like ostrich and python. 1987, however, was the big year with the successful launch of ‘L’Autre Chose’, the brand which brought him into the international spotlight. Collaborations with Alexander McQueen, Patrick Cox (an Edmonton native, if you didn’t know), Max Mara, Martin Margiela and Ter Et Bantine followed.

I first noticed this brand when jet lagged and confused, my friend and I wandered around Rome able only to order uncarbonated water and ask where the bathroom is. Using common sense we of course immediately deduced that SALDI meant sale; this was January after all, one of the two major sale times in Italy--the other is July. Following such a large shiny sign we wandered into the rather new L’autre Chose boutique. Unassuming in design, one could peruse and try on with ease, contrary to certain more intimidating higher end stores. And man, those shoes, oh man, those shoes. The clothing isn’t bad either but Michela Casdei’s ready to wear is pretty standard stuff.




Anyway, this leads me to the real subject of this post. These shoes. I need them. Look at them, they’re fantastic and they’ll make me tall. And I am short, so very short.

The Little Rock Pendant

Shell Pendants are boring but they can be useful. They’re the piece de resistance of necklaces sold by chicks wearing recycled saris in little booths that stink of incense. They spend their mornings scraping 'made in china' stickers off the backs and you're getting ripped off even at 2 for 10$!!! Usually a moderate hit with the university crowd, many people have them around, if not from these girls, from camping trips and things like that. These things are boring and a bit ugly and if you’re as landlocked as I am, look a bit silly, duuude.

But here’s why you should reuse those shell pendants if you have them, or buy them if you don’t ( not the whole necklace, please). The shells themselves are light weight, and if you’re heavyinto gemstones and rocks like I am, you know what a beautiful necklace on the heavy side feels like 2 hours into wearing it.

Yeah.

So, I've made a necklace using a shell pendant I got off a natural wind chimes thinger-ma-bober I found on heavy heavy discount (I think like, maybe 3 dollars) at Home Sense. You see, I always had the good taste never to buy a beach wear necklace in the first place ;). I originally bought the chimes for the natural rock slices, which at 3 dollars for six (usually retail for 5-15$ each) got me giddy. I never thought I'd ever have any use for the shell pendant, after all I hated necklaces with them (I know I've already said that), but looking through my tackle box the other day I thought that the perfect round shape really lent itself to a structural backing. I'd seen a lot of jewelry pieces on gilt that had featured a mosaic of hardware and stones but I didn't see how I,myself, might tackle that sort of look ( I'm not the biggest hardware girl).

So here's the result, very different from that I usually do.



Basically, I took suede leather cord and wrapped it through the pendant, attaching a rock slice which had two holes on either end through it. I proceeded to wrap those leather strands into a secure triangle around these too. (VERY TARZAN JUNGLE, insert romance fantasy novel with precious power giving stones whatever, dragons?). You can get a feel of this from the back of the pendant:

I then attached jump rings and other hardware. I'm going to assume you know how/can figure this out and own a pair of pliers. Google is your friend too.

I proceeded to attach a partridge feather I had trimmed and made a jump link out of wire, then crimped it all closed . I've stolen this image from a google search, but yes basically, you put the crimp bead over the wire and the shaft, bring the wire through again so you've got a loop; if you haven't got super sweaty palms and you're good at holding tiny things, you might want to cut the wire ahead of time and just crimp ( I do it, despite my accursed hands) it, or you can crimp and then cut but you risk a sharp or unattractive edge depending on how close you manage to make the cut and the type of wire you're using.Please note in the image, she is working with more than one feather, a VERY large crimp bead and her wire is a really heavy gauge (thick) because she is making earrings.



and other two stones ( Grey Moss Jasper and aquamarine--I think?). I got lazy with the jasper tear drop and actually just bent an earring hook ( fancy shepherd's...a cheeeap finding) and bent the tip up into the bead.

So yes, that's it. I'm happy with the end product, and I'll probably gift it.

Bisous,
Alicia