this, that and the other, plus a giveaway! PLUS A SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE!

Here's a snap I grabbed of what I consider to be absurd styling.

I took it outside the J.Crew Collection Store on Madison Avenue at 66th Street, not wanting to put the nice ladies who work in the store in an awkward position. So here we see one unrelated layer on top of another,

random grabs trying to add up to fashion, and we also see a top with a skirt in a color combination that your kindergarten teacher would make you do over.
Speaking of J.Crew, here are some instore snaps, daringly provided to the blog by lovely reader Cassandra P. They are important because they show cashmere and merino sweaters pilling before they have even left the store.



I understand and accept that cashmere spun from the cheaper, shorter fibers of the goat hair, as opposed to the longer silky fibers, will pill eventually.



And the same is true of merino. However, it's really repulsive to think that they pill while still hanging in the store.



Thanks, Cassandra!


On the other hand, here is a picture of Me in my new fur snood, and I am wearing it on top of a J.Crew cashmere tee that I bought in 2009. Find the pills and win a prize. Hmm, must do something about that chin.



And speaking of prizes, I am having a giveaway! A very little giveaway, but a giveaway nonetheless. Up for grabs are a Liberty Of London cotton print handkerchief, still wrapped on its cellophane envelope, which I bought at the original Liberty store on Regent Street, London, and



from Provence, the kind of little pottery dish that turns up everywhere. Remember Eeyore's present? A useful box to keep things in? Well, if Eeyore were French, this would be his dish. You see them on tables holding a few olives and toothpicks, or some salted nuts, or some olive oil, you see them on ledges holding tea light candles, the point is that it's a useful little dish.


The dish doesn't have a handle, it's leaning on a pen so you can see it better.

This event is only open to public followers of this blog. Anonymous entries will not be accepted.
To enter:
(1) be a public follower
(2) sign in under your Blogger I.D. and leave a comment (please include your email address if your email is not on your Blogger profile or blog).
Earn extra entries by doing any one or more of the following!
(+1) follow on Twitter @wellfedfred
(+1) mention this giveaway on your blog (include a link to your blog in your comment if you do this).
After a lot of thought, I realized it's too risky to send the dish abroad. So, if the randomly chosen winner is not in the continental US, she or he will get the hankie, and the next randomly chosen US resident will get the dish.
The giveaway will end on November 29, 2012. Good luck!



UPDATE: The delightful and intrepid Cassandra P. has provided another dressingroom photo! This is a close up of "the disintegrating Lucile dress." Well done again, Cassandra! Just looking at the mass of tangled shiny threads makes me want to grab the dress and run up to Pottery Barn to stuff it into a glass cylinder so that it can serve a useful purpose as "holiday vase filler." Twinkle, twinkle.

27 comments:

  1. I do love a gorgeous snood. I wouldn't take one of those sweaters for free. They look like they've been worn out already. I am not on FB or Twitter, but of the two Twitter sounds more fun.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, Sulky, I found myself only minutes from the showroom of Blue Duck yesterday. Well. Blue Duck makes TDF shearling coats and jackets, some sold under their own name, some sold by other companies under their names. They usually have wonderful sales in January, this year the "customer appreciation" event was this past week, and I went up and pawed through the accessories table. The snood was right there. No coat or jacket this trip, though, will see what year-end brings if anything.

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  2. Those photos of the sweaters are rather appalling. I did buy a cashmere sweater from JC earlier on and yes, it has started to pill, but I like the design and the colour so much, I am still wearing it.

    I'm entering your giveaway - those are fabulous items! I am a follower, and I am following you on Twitter (my Twitter id is @cosmetic_bee).

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    Replies
    1. Hi, Louise, I've been playing with the sticky backs of large mailing labels to get the fuzz off.

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  3. Fred - very generous! You wouldn't throw in a copper pot, too, would you?? (cheeky monkey that I am!!!) I am definitely a follower, more of a stalker actually, and my email is sydforry@gmail.com!

    I'll link back to you on my blog in the a.m. when I get a chance to get on again! A hankie is such a lovely and civilized thing, is it not??

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    Replies
    1. Hi, WMM, I would pay money to throw pots at certain people, but not at dear you.

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  4. BITTER PILLS Okay so in addition to the Mad Granny holiday guide (large plaid and houndstooth, double-layered cubist dresses and pants, giving layers a bad name) now we have the "teacher told you not to" windows. I heart handkerchiefs, especially Liberty ones. Thought I'd sign up for edible tweet treats too @annein140 getfreshpress at gmail dot com.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, GetFresh, I've been collecting their hankies forever!

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  5. Wow. Those pills! I am wearing a J.Crew men's cashmere sweater today, a Spring 2009 sample in 5 gauge. Not a pill in sight. No fuzz, either. Yet I have women's cashmere sweaters from the same era that I made into a blanket for my dog, they were that bad. Sigh. I just don't get it.

    Your giveaway is amazing, and I'd love to enter. My e-mail is jca837 at gmail.com.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, J.CrewJD, I'm chuckling at the thought of the blanket shedding on the dog.

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  6. Heehee, thanks for posting the pics. I was also going to send in pics of the metallic threads hanging loose from the collection lucille dress but I saw it on a separate trip and was too lazy to bring them into the dressing room.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, Cass, sorry to have missed the shiny thread shot!

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  7. Those in-store photos are a disgrace! JC should be ashamed of itself. Sweaters shouldn't be stored hanging in any event. I hope that you've received all kinds of contraband photos!

    (In defense of rust and pink, I have to say that I did my spare bedroom/dressing room in those shades with a little cocoa and chocolate. It was all based around a large print of a Rossetti ginger Venus with roses and it looks fab!)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi, Hexicon, so far the intimidation campaign seems to have been working, although nothing stops our Ema, who has the best disclaimer ever on her blog with her dressing room photos.

      The top on the outfit is "heather ribbon," which can't fight with the neon pink. IRL it looks like someone just grabbed a few things from the floor rather than go home in what she arrived in. It needs more than just the 2 blobs of color. I think your spare/dressing room sounds divine, first of all because I am sure you used a real rust and not a wishy-washy "heather," and second because you added those sophisticated touches of brown.

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  9. Oh my, those sweaters! No wonder they don't want in store pictures!

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  10. Hi, ajc, there's a reason for everything.

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  11. I'm delighted to enter your giveaway! I'm also sure I'm going to enjoy your additions to my twitter feed, so I'll trot on over... It really is sad to have such shopworn merchandise. I've been reasonably lucky with the pulling lately. The holey tees are another story.

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    Replies
    1. Hi, ajr, just updated the post. Sad is the perfect word. And as for those tees, yes, beyond aggravating.

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  12. This reminds me of my last year's visit to J. Crew in Boston.
    All the bags on display were horribly scratched, and they weren't even on sale...

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  13. Thanks for posting the update. It was hard to truly convey the sad state of the dresses due to the light reflecting off the metallic.

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  14. Thanks for the giveaway! Of course I'm a follower.

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  15. thank you so much for the giveaway! :) i followed on GFC.
    i've found that j. crew and other "preppy" retailers have gone downhill as of late--try asking the new england locals about which stores they're proud of! i know of castaway clothing, vermont flannel company, kiel james patrick, etc...and while i'm not in the market for a nice cashmere right now, the goodwill near my house often has $7 two-ply cashmere.
    julylightningATyahooDOTcom

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  16. Hi, elle! Last year, I ordered plaid wool slacks from LLBean. Thought they'd be nice and Christmas-sy. After consultation with the phone rep, I ordered a size larger than my normal LLB size, he thought they ran small. Well, after keeping our intrepid delivery guy extremely busy, I had tried on all of sizes 6 through 14.
    They all were the same size. I guess an assortment of size tags was added at the last minute to make a day's quota? But if you can't trust LLBean...

    ReplyDelete

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