My jaw hit the floor when I learned of Alexander McQueen’s passing earlier today. Sad stuff. I’ve ripped on the McQueen’s price points in the past, but I can’t knock his talent – he pushed the envelope, and it made him one of the greats.
McQueen’s runway collections were more fantasy than reality but he did [...]

Last week, the Financial Times explored Sustainable Fashion and actually had the cojones to ask “What does green mean?”
Green means eco chic! Green means good for the earth! Green means organic hemp cotton tees made from soda can tabs, which are like so hot right now for Spring! Or something.
At a Copenhagen conference designed to [...]

You are all undoubtedly aware of my position on celebrity style: Its obvious irrelevance to your life and mine continually results in my inability to give a shit. Alas, my unwillingness to engage in smack-talking fashions donned by famous peeps, particularly during award show season, is none too good for my traffic stats. In the [...]

Fashionista released the first images of Zac Posen for Target last week. Here’s my knee-jerk reaction to a selection of the JPEGs.

The Raincoat – dig the color, cut looks reasonably flattering. The Ruched Skirt – meh overall, demerits for an in-between length that makes 90% of legs look stumpy. The hat – why?

The Snap Tape [...]

Yesterday afternoon, I checked out the second installment of Jil Sander x Uniqlo (a.k.a. +J). It did not disappoint.

The Spring collection proved more varied than its Winter counterpart, but still managed to maintain Sander’s sleek, minimalist chic.
Egads, I just sounded like a fashion writer there. Gross. Sorry.
I waited in line for approximately five minutes [...]

Mmkay, it’s been weeks since the launch of Commes des Garcons x The Beatles, so maybe this isn’t the most timely of reactions. Whatever. I’m not throwing in my nine cents now to bitch about Commes des PouPou’s elitist perversion of the best band ever. That would be stating the obvious. No, what concerns me [...]

Dearest Alexander Wangface -
Wanna know what happens when you charge $200 for glorified athletic shorts? PEOPLE DON’T BUY THEM. Then, you have to rip off one of your old khaki styles and re-design it in cheap, easily outsourced material for the GAP. Tres drag, but hey, collabs like that keep you in business. Us fashion [...]

I’ve been known to take issue with Marc Jacobs’s warped view of a woman’s body. These shorts exemplify my position.

I found them at Buff Exchange, and concede that they’re only marginally awful on the hanger. But on the body…

…they are, hands down, the most heinous excuse for designer apparel I have EVER seen. I [...]

My adoration for New York is about as obnoxious, enthusiastic and irrational as the Queen Bee of SOTC’s. At least it was, until the ubiquitous propaganda hailing Fashion’s Night Out as, like, the greatest thing in retail EVER is started eating away at my Apple-loving soul.
It took me approximately one week to figure out the [...]

The below email gave me a nice little chuckle yesterday afternoon:
so i was doing my daily shopbop.com browsing and i clicked on my favorite designer, alexander wang. his new runway stuff apparently JUST CAME OUT, so i checked it out. always one to be disgusted by these outrageous prices, i came across the alexander [...]

Here at Cheap JAP, we do our best to shop with respect to Karma. For our purposes here, Karma means the odds of us finding fab stuff on the cheap increase in direct proportion to the frequency with which we do the right thing (i.e. allying ourselves with each other in lieu of allying ourselves [...]

Guess what happens when you screw with people’s expectations? People get disappointed. People get angry. And disappointed, angry people aren’t going to shell out eighty bucks for something ‘designer-inspired’ if more budget-friendly options abound one rack away.
So ended the tragic tale of the Alexander McQueen for Target line. Last week, Madison Avenue Spy noted that, [...]

A recent comment from ash2i got me thinking about designers duping us into blowing our dough. On 3/16/09 at 5:14 PM re: When Fugly Is Fun, she wrote:
Grrr – sometimes I really hate the fashion industry. I read recently that several designers were quoted spouting some version of the following in response to how they [...]

Mmkay, so, Target’s obvs made a killing off of their GO International line, what with the dire economic sitch and all. And while I’ve enthusiastically bashed some of its offerings, I can’t knock the line’s concept because 1. It gives emerging designers a chance to establish themselves in the Fashion world and 2. It’s reasonably [...]

I spent some time clicking around Simply Vera Vera Wang and came away incredibly confused. And by confused, I mean I experienced a strange mix of bewilderment and betrayal and oy effing vey I’m having problemos with alliteration AGAIN.
I was initially confounded by the pricetags; $128 coats, $74 skirts, $58 tops? Vera, are you [...]

I really like the idea of Marc Jacobs; the ads are refreshingly unconventional, the bags are as chic as they are functional, and most of his shoes possess subtle details that seem to say, “I paid a shitload for these.” But whenever I try on anything Marc by Marc Jacobs, I don’t feel confident, trendy, [...]

Everyone’s got a hard-on for Richard Chai for Target GO International. Sans moi, obvs. I’m not so naive that I expect the designers who slap their names onto Target GO International tags to actually design the collection – they’ve got more important things to worry about, like figuring out how to stuff their size 2 [...]

Know how I know the lines by everyone else “for GO International” royally sucked? Because I never wore a goddamn thing from any of them. Most of the Erin Fetherston stuff screamed Alice in Wonderland on Crack, the Jovovich-Hawk line boasted nine different versions of the same, baggy “minidress”, and don’t even get me started [...]

Hey high-end designers! Think you can bullshit your way through your budget line and get away with it? Think again! Every week (or whenever I feel like it), Designer Slumdown pits the wallet-friendly lines of two high-end designers against each other, and sees who slums it best.
Rogan Gregory for Target vs. H&M x Marimekko

Sooo, [...]

This bag was part of my JAPnukah loot, courtesy of Mommy. It’s not my favorite thing she scored at Scoop; even at the fair price of $28, it’s a little too message-y for my taste. But I use it going to and from work when I have to cart around my tragically boring uniform of [...]