Michael Tonello's Blog, page 11

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE - Purse Organizers at Work

WATER WATER EVERYWHEREI recently had a full bottle of hand sanitizer leak, after failing to notice it cracked after I dropped it. Fortunately it leaked inside my le Mobile® purse organizer.

This led me to perform a little experiment with the various purse organizers I've purchased.

No one plans to have something leak inside their purse; but as we all know accidents happen.
Water bottles, baby bottles, perfume, pens, and make-up, have leaked inside my handbags over the years.    I even had a bottle of vitamin water with a pale purple tint leak into Grey Himalayan Kelly when I neglected to tighten the lid!

I was very curious to see how this experiment would go.

I started with the No Sacrifice® le Mobile.

I filled it up with water, leaving it for 30 minutes; just to see what would happen.


I've put this organiser through the washing machine several times.   I've also scrubbed it with a Mr. Clean eraser, and used rubbing alcohol on it to remove a pen stain.It's still as good as new.After 30 minutes, even filled with water; le Mobile® was not leaking!
So how did the others do?(the following order are according to price; high to low)le Mobile is second according to price.First I tried the most expensive organizer; The Jane Finds Baginizer.It started to leak immediately.I didn't even get a chance to fill it.
Next up, (according to price from high to low) was the MaiTai insert It also leaked immediately, before I could fill it up.
Samorga, too leaked immediately, and being made of felt, it soaked up the water too. Divide & Conquer leaked like a sieve, with all the water pouring through the bottom.
Bagmate faired better. Although it still leaked, it just leaked slower.
Chameleon Structured readily leaked with water both dripping and pouring out.
Chameleon Unstructured  actually leaked slower than the structured version; but it did start leaking immediately. Each purse organizer insert; except the le Mobile® leaked.They also leaked so fast I was unable to get past having to hold them over the sink.I was able to walk around and hold the le Mobile over my Himalayan Birkin without worry about a  single drop.
 After all isn't protecting the interior of your bags one of the reasons you purchase a purse organizer?-----------------------------
reblogged from A Real Purse Blog purseblogrealpurse-theduchessofh.blogspot/

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE - A Tale of Purse Organizers at Work

WATER WATER EVERYWHERE I recently had a full bottle of hand sanitizer leak, after failing to notice it cracked after I dropped it. Fortunately it leaked inside my le Mobile® purse organizer.

This led me to perform a little experiment with the various purse organizers I've purchased.

No one plans to have something leak inside their purse; but as we all know accidents happen.
Water bottles, baby bottles, perfume, pens, and make-up, have leaked inside my handbags over the years.    I even had a bottle of vitamin water with a pale purple tint leak into Grey Himalayan Kelly when I neglected to tighten the lid!

I was very curious to see how this experiment would go.

I started with the No Sacrifice® le Mobile.

I filled it up with water, leaving it for 30 minutes; just to see what would happen.


I've put this organiser through the washing machine several times.   I've also scrubbed it with a Mr. Clean eraser, and used rubbing alcohol on it to remove a pen stain.It's still as good as new.After 30 minutes, even filled with water; le Mobile® was not leaking!  So how did the others do?(the following order are according to price; high to low)le Mobile is second according to price.First I tried the most expensive organizer; The Jane Finds Baginizer.It started to leak immediately.I didn't even get a chance to fill it.  Next up, (according to price from high to low) was the MaiTai insert It also leaked immediately, before I could fill it up.  Samorga, too leaked immediately, and being made of felt, it soaked up the water too. Divide & Conquer leaked like a sieve, with all the water pouring through the bottom.  Bagmate faired better. Although it still leaked, it just leaked slower.  Chameleon Structured readily leaked with water both dripping and pouring out.  Chameleon Unstructured  actually leaked slower than the structured version; but it did start leaking immediately. Each purse organizer insert; except the le Mobile® leaked.They also leaked so fast I was unable to get past having to hold them over the sink.I was able to walk around and hold the le Mobile over my Himalayan Birkin without worry about a  single drop.   After all isn't protecting the interior of your bags one of the reasons you purchase a purse organizer?-----------------------------  reblogged from A Real Purse Blog purseblogrealpurse-theduchessofh.blogspot/

Pink Crocodile Birkin with Saphires $210,000

BIRKIN 30 model handbag. Smooth, Tyrien pink porosus crocodile. Fastening set with pink sapphires. Receipt and quote (December 2013). Diamond and precious metal certificate. Characteristics of jewelry: White gold 176.3 grams Numbered fastening: 205 x pink sapphires/11.02 carats Numbered jeweled padlock in its case. 40 x pink sapphires/2.01 carats. Several dustbags, little booklet on exotic leather, box, ribbon, orange H bag.

http://www.vestiairecollective.com/wo...

It's like going to Hermès thinking you can get a Birkin. Silly you.

Lilly Pulitzer for Target: They Came, They Waited, They Went Home Mad  Buyers line up for Lilly Pulitzer at a Target pop-up shop at Bryant Park in New York. 

Never underestimate the hunger of a barely thawed populace for a warm breeze of Palm Beach.Last Sunday, they lined up in droves at Target stores across the country, or set alarms for predawn hours to wake up and shop Target.com. (Some New Yorkers lined up early at a Bryant Park pop-up on Thursday.)The object of their collective obsession was the Lilly Pulitzer for Target collection, an affordable line of brightly printed women’s wear, children’s wear, home goods and matching makeup.Within hours (even minutes in some locations), it was almost entirely sold out, in stores and online. According to Target, it was one of the fastest-selling collaborations it has undertaken, out of more than 150 such joint projects since introducing the program in 1999.
Jane Schoenborn, Lilly Pulitzer’s vice president for marketing and creative communications, saw it all firsthand. She went to her local Target, at the Valley Forge Shopping Center in King of Prussia, Pa., and stood in line with the company president (at the back, she said).“It was slim pickings,” she said this week. “I saw a couple women I work with clinging to the umbrellas.” She herself managed to snag a few mugs.Since Sunday, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook have trembled with the frustration of shut-out shoppers, and pictures surfaced of racks picked clean, bare white hangers scattered like carrion bones on the veld. Online, the demand was such that Target briefly shut down its website for maintenance in the early hours of Sunday. (It refutes the notion that the site crashed.) photo:  Credit Cindy Ord/Getty Images for Targethttp://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/23/fas... 

New Hermes Handbag Ad "Halzan" Spring Summer 2015

The Rapper Heems on Sticking to His Roots, Eschewing Stylists and His Signature Hermès Scarf

By Meredith Graves The rapper Himanshu Kumar Suri, who records as Heems, in his parents' home.Credit Jesse Dittmar/ReduxHeems, né Himanshu Kumar Suri, looks equal parts regal and comfortable holding court in the back of Brooklyn’s Cafe El Beit. Dressed in tailored black separates, his shiny hair slicked up into a high bun, he could be dressed for any one of his many roles: art curator, clothing designer, loving uncle, political activist and, of course, rapper. His first solo album, “Eat Pray Thug,” was released last month to critical accolades. (His former project, the hip-hop group Das Racist, was likewise beloved for its incisive and playful lyrics.) But Suri barely allowed himself time to celebrate, instead diving right back into community politics — specifically, the desperate call for a taxi stand near Manhattan’s beloved Punjabi Deli.Credit Jesse Dittmar/ReduxSuri’s political ideology is the force that drives his music as well as his visual aesthetic. “Eat Pray Thug” is, by his own admission, a rap record about Islamophobia, made by an Indian and Middle Eastern New Yorker who defines his personal style as “Taliban chic.” He’s fully aware that he contains multitudes — so thankfully, his end goal isn’t for people to get him. “I like my fashion to be expressive of who I am, but also to confuse and play with your understanding of the world around you,” he says. “Not necessarily antagonizing, just playing with people’s expectations.”Honor your background.
“I like to combine street wear and high fashion with Indian clothing. It might be just one article, like a hat or a scarf, but I can include something that looks like my grandfather would have worn it, almost like a uniform. Yesterday I had my Pashtun cap on. And I love my kurtas. They’re super comfortable, super mundane. Indian people wear them every day, whether you’re the common man going to the grocery store or you’re a politician with millions of Euros in a Swiss account, you still wear a kurta — a long white tunic shirt — with pajama pants. I love that it’s a uniform, but it’s extremely chic and elegant.”Early impressions stick.
“In one of our earlier Das Racist press photos, I was wearing one of Victor’s really colorful sweaters, so I’ve always been associated with this colorful, hipstery, thrift-shop aesthetic, though that was not my aesthetic. I was much more comfortable wearing $500 T-shirts than I was wearing used, smelly ones. I like it in theory — I like the idea of not paying so much for clothes — but I think maybe because of the immigrant thing, the idea of wearing someone’s used clothing is just not okay in my household. Like, ‘Why are you wearing someone else’s used clothing? We didn’t come here and work our asses off so you could wear some white dude’s old Bulls T-shirt from ’92 that he threw away.'”Look to friends with similar backgrounds for inspiration.
“I was hanging out with Waris Ahluwalia. He’s another South Asian in New York. He’s amazing, and a sweetheart. If you want to talk about who else is stylish, well, Waris is one of the most stylish — not just South Asians, but New Yorkers.”Respect the means of production.
“My mother came here with a master’s degree in economics, and in the daytime she would bag groceries at the Pathmark for four dollars an hour, and at night she worked in an Indian guy’s sweatshop making elastic belts with my friend Sunil’s mom. Thank God she had that job, which was really helpful to get us through a tough time financially. It’s not the most glamorous career; she did what she had to. Textiles are a huge part of the conversation on women in India and labor.”Have your clothes custom-made.
“Coming into this album, I wanted to have a defined aesthetic, not just with my videos and album art, but with my clothing and look as well. I’ve been trying to wear as much custom stuff as I can, designing my own stuff or having it made, and wearing more Indian clothes that are harder to find. I’m still expressing myself and having fun and playing with colors and shapes and textures, but I’m not buying $500 Acne Studios shirts anymore. I got a bunch of fabric from India and had it tailored in Thailand; they got it done in three days.”Listen to your parents.
“The reason I wear a bright orange Hermès scarf often is because it looks like a Hindu priest’s scarf. When I brought that home, my dad was like, ‘That was three dollars, right? You’re wearing a sadhu scarf.’ A sadhu is a wandering ascetic who is a devotee of Shiva. I was like, ‘Yeah … three dollars.’ It’s a little joke with myself that the H for ‘Hermès’ actually stands for ‘Hindu.’ Coming from this immigrant background helps me keep my money and fashion in check.”Credit Jesse Dittmar/ReduxDon’t let capitalism control your desires, but be gentle with those who do.
“My feelings about materialism are quite complicated. I’m guilty of materialism. I understand the context of materialism, especially in the American working class. I get why, when we don’t have anything, then when we get stuff, we get excited. When other people tell me, ‘Oh, I don’t like most rap, but your rap I love,’ I take offense at that, because I come from that culture. I don’t agree with materialism or misogyny, but I look at context before I point fingers.”Do things that make you feel beautiful, even when people stare.
“Sometimes when I’m out, if I’m feeling a certain way, I’ll put kajal in my eyes,” Heems says, using the South Asian term for kohl, or eyeliner. “When I was in India I’d see these gorgeous little babies with kajal in their eyes. As you get older it’s mostly the women that wear it — the men are forbidden — but little babies, little kids, boys, can put kajal in their eyes. I didn’t like that distinction. Why can you do it when you’re 5 and not when you’re 15?”Stay away from stylists.
“I’ve always been averse to working with stylists. A lot of times they’d have preconceived notions of what rappers were supposed to dress like, so they’d bring silver chains with dollar signs on them. Like, are you joking me? First off, this is just racist, and you’re an idiot. Second of all, this doesn’t look good.”
http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/20...

Hot Hermès Handbags

News
Paris Thieves Steal Over $1M Worth Of Hermès HandbagsThieves made off with 500 Hermes bags (valued collectively at $1.07 million) after robbing a packaging and logistics facility northwest of Paris on Thursday evening. According to WWD , a group of six individuals forced the lone manager at the supply space to load the bags onto a truck before they fled in two vehicles.
The products, which included canvas and leather handbags ranging from $500 to $5,000, still were missing as of Friday afternoon.

Hermès in Lovely Lisbon

Art is a luxury brand you probably can’t afford

by Raymond Gill  If you subscribe to the view that contemporary art has been swallowed by big money, big galleries, big collectors and big brands then the merging of  visual art and expensive retail visual merchandising is perfectly complete in a show that opened in London at the weekend.Whereas the retrospective of Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami at Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007 which included his own “line’ ‘of Louis Vuitton products for sale could be interpreted as playfully ironic  –  the French leather goods brand Hermes at the Saatchi Gallery (natch) is displaying its wares in ways not too dissimilar to how it does the Christmas windows at its flagship store on Rue St Honore in Paris.


The Hermes- organised exhibition’s theme is “flanerie” — the elegant French term for strolling or wandering without purpose. ”“Flânerie, that wonderfully liberating art of urban wandering, is second nature to Hermès, one could even say our most profound nature”, says Pierre-Alexis Dumas, the Hermes artistic director on the Saatchi Gallery website.
It continues: “Quintessentially Parisian, flânerie is about revelling in the unexpected. ‘The journey through Wanderland draws its coherence from two intrinsic elements of la flânerie: dreaming and freedom of spirit, explains Bruno Gaudichon, curator of La Piscine-Musée d’Art et d’Industrie in Roubaix, who was commissioned to create the exhibition.”



Eleven rooms at the Saatchi Gallery in Sloane Square have been sequestered by the Parisian set designer and high-end furniture designer Hubert le Gall enticing visitors into a highfalutin window shopping without having to board the Eurostar for the two and half hour train trip to Paris to experience the real thing.
The website gushes: (It) plunge visitors, the flâneurs themselves, into a dream world of joy and fantasy, with a Paris-inspired landscape as its backdrop. The eleven rooms present a series of installations in various media, created by a diverse selection of artists. From the Parisian square, to the covered passage, or a cafe of forgotten objects this veritable extended cabinet of curiosities will delight and intrigue visitors, inviting each of them to open their eyes, free their minds and be enveloped by the colour, sounds and images that surround them”.


A number of artists working in various media including video artists Romain Laurent, Nicolas Tourte, Magali Desbazeille and Siegfried Canto have created highly theatrical rooms for the exhibition. Among the exhibits are a 19th century Parisian shopping arcade while one room is filled with “special edition” handbags including the famous Hermes Birkin Bag which normally sells for about $30,000 — but at Saatchi is just for admiring.
But Dumas argues that this is a show for everyone. He told The Telegraph: ”It’s not about marketing the brand, it’s more about conveying who we are, something that even children can enjoy, you just need a fresh eye to look at it”.

Pop Art Silver Birkin - Bill Cunningham Spring Unfurls on the Streets of New York