Friday, July 20, 2007

Arden B. is having a huge sale 70% off



Make sure you click on the image to print out the whole coupon. I love their jeans, but not so much the dresses from this season ... I suppose that's been the trend this season, short short short. The retro style is too impractical for my taste.

Beware of their store policy of no accessory returns. They almost got me for $100 bucks when I bought an outfit, and when the dress wasn't what I wanted, they gave me a hard-time on returning the clutch that I got to go with the dress.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Asian fashion vs. European fashion vs. American fashion

My husband is of the opinion that anything from China or Korea or Asian fashion in general are no comparison to European fashion. As much as I hate to disagree with his sweeping assertion, I have yet to convince myself that Asian fashion can truly stand on its own in the world fashion Arena.

You can do your own comparison by checking out the two websites below
http://www.yesstyle.com/ for Asian fashion from designer to discount brands
http://www.custo-barcelona-shop.com/ for European designer fashion
Okay ... yeah ... sorry no comparison. As far as coutures go, Asia still has qutie a bit of catching up to do ... but I personally don't think that you need to be dressed in couture to look good.

I think the average ready-to-wears in Asia are more stylized than their US counter parts (not European counterparts), but perhaps that's because the average US shoppers have more conservative tastes (my DH is also of the opinion that US shoppers have no taste period). I'll admit that many things on yesstyle.com make me drool (even though custo-barcelona-shop.com makes me drool even more), and cry because they don't come in my new size after baby.

I think a lot of the Asian stuff can look very cute on Western bodies if only they come in larger sizes. Even some Asian women such as myself have problem finding clothes in their own countries due to the size limitations, and I am by no means large. It's fortunate that I live in American, and buying clothes has always been a breeze for me, but in Asia, a size 6 or 8 would be considere big, and when it comes to shoes, I should forget about it, size 8 is as big as most brands would carry. I am sadly, 8.5, so it's not much fun shoe-shoping in Beijing or Shanghai when I'm faced with a dizzying array of selections and only to find that nothing comes in my size. But I digress. When it comes to clothes, an average sized American girl would feel large shopping in China. There is definitely an obvious size discrimination in Asian fashion. It's also quite unfortunate that I live in America for reasonably priced clothes here have no edginess; they make me yawn most of the time. A tiny bit of design would give the sticker price some shock value. Why can't we strike a balance?

My Facebook Fashion Application

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

Korean Modern Fashion 2

Also by the same Korean designer. It's fun and flirty, and great for the city life style. I can see Cary Bradshaw in this with a cute pair of Manolo. I think before Sex and the City had couture labels lending them costumes for the show left and right, they could have done very well dressing her in today's Korean designers.

Korean modern fashion

This dress is by a Korean designer. Isn't it lovely? It's got a very cute Asian sensibility to it. Why can't we get things like this in US. I love the light fabric, and the ultra-feminine style. The little bit of design in this dress would have allowed its price to be marked up to over 100 in US, but in Asia, you can get it for a quarter of that.

Monday, July 16, 2007

Online Clothes Shopping Guide


As much as I love the convenience of buying stuff online, it hasn't been a smooth sailing experience when it comes buying clothes online. In fact, recently I've sworn several times to never buy another piece of clothing online. But as you can guess, the convenience and the increasingly powerful digital advertising media keeps drawing me back again and again to the stores where I've made bad purchases hoping that this time around it's going to be different. However I can't say that all of my online-shopping experience has been bad, and there are definitely lessons to be learned and tips to note down, so I'd like to summarize my experience below in hope that it will help others in the quest for the perfect online clothes shopping experience. I will be focusing on those stores I frequent the most.

Victoria's Secret

Beauty is in the [fill in the blank]. My answer --- model. I don't think I'm the first girl to ask the question "why does it look so good on the model and not on me"? No actually I don't think it's just because the model is prettier and thinner, and have bigger boobs. It also has much to do with the quality of the clothes. Sometimes I'm just not so convinced that what I see on the catalogue is actually what I get in the mail. As far as clothing from VS goes (excluding lingerie), my overall impression is that they are made of poor quality material, and have just so so or below average workmanship compare to items in the same price range that you may find in department stores.

Lingerie on the other hand fares better, however you still risk getting sub-par quality items if the item you've chosen is not sold in the stores. It's definitely easier to pass off cheaply-made items for more than what they are online just by putting them on a pretty model since you can't feel or touch the material. The company knows it and takes full advantage of that fact.

Overall Impression: Unsatisfactory
Clothes - thumbs way down
Lingerie - thumbs up for in stores
thumbs up for online if item also available in-store, and is on sale
Return Shipping: $5

ASOS.com
My previous post rated ASOS very high in terms of their online-advertising effort, but this is a post about the quality of items sold, and I'd have to say that they too suffer from the same malady as Victoria's Secret. What rated ASOS so high in the previous post is what rates them so low in this post, because the glitzy pictures and run-way videos raise your expectations of the products so high that in the end the let-down is so great that it's almost unbearable. More often than not have I ended up buying poor quality items that can not be worn period, or can not be worn again after one wash. However, I have to say that I have been buying mostly their store brand stuff, which is much cheaper than the designer collection they have. Perhaps my cheapness got to me. But who's not looking out for bargains?

Overall Impression: I can't resist their website ... sigh. But most of the stuff on sale are better off left on the models. I'm sure you can't go wrong with their designer stuff, but I'd much rather just try them on in a store to make sure things fit if I'm going to blow that much money on a piece of clothing.
Sales: they are so very very enticing but more likely than not, you're better off spending the money on buying one good piece of clothe than purchasing many pieces of ill-fitting rags.
Return: They're in UK! So don't plan to return anything.


J Crew

I love J Crew for its quality in stores and online. The down-side of purchasing items online is that you can not return the clearance items period. So if you happen to get them in the wrong size, you are stuck with them. However, the quality never fails to impress me regardless of what I get. Their online items are as good as their in store items. However their in-store sales are much better than their online sales.

Overall Impression: Great Quality
Sales: better in store than online
Returns Negatives: can not return clearance items bought online

Gap
I think the quality of their clothing in general has been going down in the recent years, even though the price hasn't. And as in the J Crew case, their online quality is very comparable to their in-store quality because the items sold are more or less the same.

However I did enjoy shopping at Gap Maternity online last year. The clothes are very comfortable and stylish as pictured online. I also loved the return policy where you can return the clothes in any store free of charge.

Quality: thumbs up for maternity, but down for general women's clothing
Returns: good anywhere in-store

Banana Republic
The only thing I've bought from Banana Republic online ever was a belt since I wanted to test out the waters before doing any bulk purchases. To my dismay, the item turned out to be of lesser quality than pictured.

Nordstrom
Great sales for design brands. The quality is guaranteed by the fact that you are purchasing designer labels. They also allow you to return online-bought items to any stores. I would definitely buy from them again if I weren't so cash-strapped right now.

Shopbop.com
The items sold on this website are in general over my price range, however, it's still nice to see what kinds of nice things are out there. While pregnant I wanted to buy something to motivate myself to lose the baby weight after baby, so I went to the website and found a designer red dress which was on deep discount. When the dress came, of course I was too big to fit into it, so I waited and waited. Let's just say that in the end, the dress acted as a great motivator, and that was about it.

Monday, July 9, 2007

Fashion E-Newsletter Digest

Gap, Banana, Victoria's Secret, all step aside and make room for UK's ASOS. When it comes to fashion e-newsletters, the Brits kick ass of all that America has to offer, and maybe even make them look just a tad prudish.

As a fanatic of fashion e-newsletters, my subscriptions cover virtually all major US labels. Do I read them all? Not really, in fact most hit the trash as soon as I set eyes on them. I'd say that the average newsletter will command no more than 2 seconds of my attention before hitting the delete button. ASOS though, is definitely a dimond in the rough. Please note however that I am not comparing the clothing quality, or prices of the named stores. This article is written from purely a newsletter perspective.

What makes ASOS newsletter special? The obvious one is that it's eye-catching. The layout is alwasy pleasant and interesting to look at. The odd angles and diagonal lines section up the page in such a way to make the advertised items compete for attention with each other, yet prevent the page from looking over-crowded. My first reaction is always "wow look at all these cool stuff they have". Then my eyes quickly scan the page for those thing I like. The newsletter usually features several different styles of fashion and color schemes, so that there is always something for everyone, regardless of your taste.

Scroll it Baby
Some web designers believe that everything should be contained at the top of the page without the user having to scroll down. It seems that most of the US fashion newsletters adhere to this concept religiously, by fitting all that they can in just one screen. But in my opinion that's is gambling. Since your real-estate is limited, you have to pick and choose carefully of the things you can advertise, and since there are fewer things you can advertise, you can only guess as to what most customers would be interested in seeing. But what if you guessed wrong? Delete. I also think that this rule is quite old, at least I've heard it since way back in college when dial-up was still hot. It would have made plenty of sense back then because people didn't have the patience to wait for things on a large page to load. But with the advant of Internet technologies, having to scroll down the page has become less and less of an issue. If I subscribe to a fashion e-newsletter, I want to see lots of pictures. The more the better. It's all about the visuals. Plus if you make top of the page interesting enough, who wouldn't want to scroll down for more?

Case and point. Checkout the Victoria Secret and Banana Republic e-newsletters to the left. The former chose to go with the black and brown color scheme (I hate that dress by the way), and the latter went with the professional white (I'm not looking for office attires at this moment). Neither newsletters got a click-through from moi because nothing caught my eyes, whereas ASOS got at least two.

Having more is more and less is maybe well ... not at all

VS and Banana also lost out to ASOS on the frequency at which the newsletters are sent. You would think that having less content per newsletter would encourage the companies to send out the newsletters more frequently, but au contrar. ASOS sends them out daily, compare to the several-daysly or whenever we feel like it from most other companies. But perhaps the US companies are correct in not subjecting their subscribers to these boring uninspiring e-newsletters on a daily basis. Newsletters from ASOS however are the things I look forward to reading with my morning coffee. Keep them coming baby.

I suppose one of the reasons ASOS stand out so much in the digital print format is because this is their arena for they are purely online-based; having a fabulous e-newsletter is essential to attract new and old customers to their website. But wait, wouldn't the same hold true for pretty much all clothing labels with an online prescence?