Can't get enough of this group right now. I'm AMAZED that they're unsigned, with songs this catchy and radio-friendly. I'm sure I'll be featuring more of them soon, maybe even later this week. (The only link I can really give is to their myspace, though - they don't have a website and they're not on last.fm or youtube. Tricky!)
"With members of French, American, Swiss and Vietnamese parentage, based in several cities around the globe, [Moriarty is] a ramshackle olde world acoustic outfit with a theatrical bent and a tendency to dress like 1930s Prohibition outlaws who make a mess of sound that takes in folk, country, blues, jazz and cabaret."
Hee. I was pleasantly surprised by this in the New Arrivals on Forever 21's website; it had a retro-kitsch cleverness to it that seemed out of place. Then I realized it was part of the H81 line, and it all made sense. Heritage 1981 is a branch of F21, which began as a clothing line I guess, and is now slowly emerging as a chain of stores. I am fortunate enough to have one at a nearby mall here in DC. In terms of style, Heritage 1981 is basically Forever 21 brought down to earth. The clothes are more lo-fi and chill, but still fall into current trends and are Hip and With It. Forever 21 is a very bright store, white walls, clothes booming with bright colors. Walk into an Heritage1981 and you'll find more wood than white, normal lights, normal or earthy tones for the clothes with the occasional pop of brightness on a boho silk sundress or a knit. You get the idea.
Commercially, I'm sure they're targeting the high school girls who shy away from glossy clubwear and instead get their pride from being into The Beatles, recycling their plastics, reading recreationally and being into other "nerdy" things. It's modeled to be the Stereotypical Indie-Alt Girl's answer to F21. There are a lot of those girls. I expect the stores to do well. Of course, it's also an answer for any kind of girl who just has a more mellow sense of style and wants to dress cute for cheap. If you can't tell by now, it's one of my favorite places to shop. GO IN if you ever come across one!
The price? $22.80. Not too bad, it's a pretty nice, flouncy cut. If it were in a different color (that pink doesn't work well on me), then I'd definitely be interested. Regardless, it's a memorable enough look that it stuck in my mind... so when I was browsing through Modcloth's dresses this afternoon, and saw this item a few pages in:
It's definitely the same dress; I checked the descriptions on both sites, and they have the same composition (97% cotton, 3% spandex).
Now, like I said, I do actually love Modcloth, so maybe I'd let this slide without saying anything... except that this is actually the THIRD time I've seen this ripoff phenomenon with an identical item between Modcloth.com and a cheaper place's site, like F21 or Wetseal. The first two times were just before I started this blog. (Isn't it nice to share things!)
So what gives, Modcloth? Where do you get off selling F21-grade products at Urban Outfitters prices? And no offense to F21, I shop there a lot -- but anyone who DOES shop there knows that their clothes are not generally well-made, durable, high-quality wares. They're the economical option for decent fashion. Selling the same stuff that you'd find at F21 or Wetseal at double the price is like smuggling a Whopper into a nice sit-down restaurant and selling it as a $15 burger.
Thing is, people will buy that jacked-up, overpriced cheapo burger. Why? Because the nice, sit-down restaurant has Atmosphere, and it's the Atmosphere that's convincing. A customer walks in, checks out the nice look of things, checks out the $7-50 menu range... and thinks, "hey, this is a fairly nice place. Their food must be pretty good!" Likewise, Modcloth can get away with selling cheap clothes at heightened prices because so many people find their site, see the nice layout and the $25-150 dollar price range on the sleekly-photographed apparel, the $40-150 dresses... and go "hey, this is a fairly nice place. Their clothes must be pretty good!"In short, if a product is in a surrounding context of good quality, and is promoted like it's quality, then people will believe it's quality. So they'll pay more for it. Business.
And wouldn't you know, the "Pomegranate Dress" is completely out of stock at Modcloth right now. But if you like it, hey, why not click back over to Forever 21 and buy it for $25 less? They're out of pink too, but they also offer it in orange.
Fdjfgkhduighfdga;dfsk oh my god this song is HYSTERICAL out of the context of the movie. (Though it made me laugh the one time I watched it during The Lion King 2, as well.)
LET HIM RUN LET HIM LIVE BUT DO NOT FORGET WHAT WE CANNOT FORGIVE!!!
So my lovely mother scored a free copy of the September issue of VOGUE from her workplace... And I was just noticing a couple things as I paged through.
First:
Fantastic pair of jeans in a new ad for Hudson... very artistically destroyed, with the key being the Union Jack underlayer. I have been googling trying to hunt these down for sale, but all for naught. I hope they are released as an actual buyable item eventually, even if it's at a ludicrous price.
Obviously I can't move on from these without noting the HAIR "Manchester England" connection, a song I featured in a very recent entry! I'm sure a real-life, modern-day Claude would flip out if he came across this ad. But then, so would Mr. Neil WOOF Donovan... to make things more uncanny, the model wearing the jeans is none other than Georgia May Jagger, daughter of Micky Mick, Micky Jag himself.
This photo spread is definitely a highlight of the issue. Check out the rest of it out here, where a kind and google-able soul has shared it on their own blog. My favorite shot is probably this one. Amaaaazing riding coat. (Too bad it's 3,000 dollars...)
Love this song. It's from Joe's show "THINGS TO RUIN," and makes for a pretty goddamn rousing opening number. This performance was at Joe's Pub (named for a different Joe altogether) back in 2007.
Here's another video of it done a year later at The Zipper Factory, so you can see what it looks like as part of the actual show T2R, with its current usual cast. (No fancy zoomy schwasty camera effects on this one, though):
Lol am I seriously posting this song? Yes. Sadly I couldn't find any "black slacks with accentuating off-white pinstripes, oo-woah-oh," so instead we'll have to make do with this fabulously pretentious $150 jacket from Free People.
NYLONVINYL is a (hopefully) daily blog for clothes and music. Each entry = 1 thing to wear + 1 thing to hear. All content is crossposted to livejournal.
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