Wes Anderson Returns: The Darjeeling Limited

Although it makes my film student friends cringe and roll their eyes, I can't deny that I'm a huge fan of Wes Anderson. A lot of times my devotion to his films is written off as some type of hipster fad, but really it's because I love his strong sense of style. He has a clear vision of what he wants and sticks to it. I find that admirable.

(Stepping off soap box now). So given my love of all things Wes Anderson, it should come as no surprise that I'm very excited about his upcoming movie The Darjeeling Limited, starring Jason Schwartzman, Owen Wilson and Adrien Brody. And of course, no Anderson film would be complete without an amazing soundtrack.

I can only assume that Wes Anderson is a fan of fashion. Angelica Houston carries around a Hermes Kelly bag in The Royal Tenenbaums, jewelry designer Waris Ahluwalia has been in a number of his films, and then there's those great special edition Adidas sneakers from The Life Aquatic. The fashion connection in The Darjeeling Limited? Specially designed Louis Vuitton luggage by Marc Jacobs himself. Plus, the three main characters spend their time running around India in LV suits. Not too shabby.

The luggage pattern was designed by Wes Anderson's brother Eric Anderson (whose great illustrations can be found on the walls of the Tenenbaum's house and in his book Chuck Dugan is AWOL). The luggage will be auctioned off blah, blah, blah. Basically it won't be replicated. So even if I had a couple of thousand - make that tens of thousands - to spend on luggage, there would be no way to get my hands on it. So that leaves me with no option other than to drool over the images below.


CL

Friday Outfits

Usually we're rushing around in the morning getting ready for work, but for some reason we had some extra time yesterday morning. So we'd thought we'd be productive and take some outfit shots. I took the above picture from our balcony - who knew a dead tree could be so lovely?

Fridays are more casual at the office so I wore jeans and a shirt. Lauren rarely has to dress up for work, so she's wearing a skirt and heals just for kicks.

Lauren's outfit: Printed t-shirt from DressCodes, skirt from Express (about 10 years ago), boots from Tarjay.

My outfit: shirt from J.Crew, belt is secondhand, jeans are Bitten by SJP, Salvador Ferragamo oxfords from ebay.

CL

Campers

Even though I've never owned a pair of Campers shoes, I've always been a big fan. They're well-made shoes, meant for serious walking and have been popular in Europe for years. Now I'm starting to see Campers in a number of stores/boutiques in the U.S., so I think the trend has finally crossed the pond. Better yet, the 2007 fall line has some really great designs. If I can give up on some other things on my wish list, I might have money to actually buy a pair (Campers usually run between $150 and $250). To see more styles - including men's shoes - visit www.campers.com.

These are my absolute favorites. I'd wear them with a skirt and dark tights.

I already have a pair of oxfords, but these have a great copper color - unusual, but not flashy.
These would also look great with opaque tights or super skinny jeans tucked.

CL

Fashion Inspiration: Charlotte Gainsbourg

We know we've mentioned her before, but there are a few very good reasons Ms. Gainsbourg is worth mentioning as often as we choose. Apart from having the usual French fashionista je ne sais quoi, Gainsbourg seems to possess this without trying too hard. She doesn't pout or stand with an exaggerated arched back. She is effortlessly chic without being constantly aware of it. We thank her for being the absolutely necessary balance to the Lohans and Hiltons of the world: celebrated unconventional beauty amongst formulaic carbon copies. So, Ms. Gainsbourg, we salute you with our outfits of the day. We aspire to your type of je ne sais quoi...




CL:
tank- DressCodes
Jeans- FCUK
shoes- Payless



LL:
shirt- Banana Republic
shorts- Old Navy
shoes- a wee shoe store in Edinburgh


LL

More Apartment Pics

It's still a work in progress, but here are a few more pictures from our apartment.

We decided to use our loft space as a kind of office/art studio. We plastered one of the walls with inspirational images from magazines, newspapers, postcards from local galleries etc.


Lauren's art corner: lots of paintings in progress, sketch books, cans of paint brushes and markers, images of famous works, and a stack of unpaid bills...


We each have our own bathroom. Lauren's has a lot of hot pink and bright colors. Mine is pretty neutral, but all the walls are covered with black-framed pictures.

CL

Peacan Pie Couture

To continue with a dessert trend from the previous post, here's a post devoted to Atlanta's own Pecan Pie Couture. The company was founded by Clint Zeagler, a native of Sylvania, Georgia, whose grandparents owned a pie factory in southern Georgia for over 3 decades (some of the graphics on the t-shirts are from the original pie packaging).

In honor of the Spring RTW 2008 fashion weeks happening in all the major international cities around the world, I figured it was time to highlight some good ol' fashion design from the south. After all, according to the Pecan Pie Couture website, the company's "graphic-stenciled and hand-embroidered t-shirts are the perfect combination of big-city opulence and small-town charm." You won't find that kind of combination in New York, London, Milan or Paris, so get your fill here:

Clint Zeagler

Pecan Pie's Summer '08 line, Well Just Bless Your Little Heart, is a tribute to all things southern: front porches, sweet tea, "fried country fashion" and "holy southern casserole."




See the rest of the collection here.

CL

The Ultimate Donut (yes, even better than KK)

Just a quick pic to make you drool. Cath and I have mentioned them before, but never with a photo. These delightful morsels are from Duck's Cosmic Kitchen in Decatur. We really do love Krispy Kreme, but even at the risk of sounding horribly disloyal to the donut king, we whole-heartedly encourage every one of you in the area to taste one of these cakey, buttery delights covered in sugar and cinnamon. If you tragically live outside the metro-Atlanta area, these are worth the plane/train/car trip alone. Coca-Cola Museum, eat your heart out.

LL

Jewelry Board and Floating Shelves

For the past few days we've been spending our time hammering and drilling all of our pictures, clocks and and cork boards into our new apartment walls (I'm sure our neighbors are not too happy with us). The images below are just a few examples of the handy work that's taking place.

My jewelry board is a pain to hang up because it's so heavy, but once it's up I can find everything so easily and don't have to spend half the morning untangling my gold chains. I'm not much of a jewelry girl - I can't tell the difference between a real diamond and a nicely cut piece of glass. Still, I appreciate jewelry for what it can add to an outfit - and wall.

Jewelry board close-up:

Next to the board are my floating bookcases. My boyfriend got these for me last year and they're still one of my favorite gifts. In my previous apartment I stacked up a collection of blue books, but this time I went for a mix of beige and hot pink.

CL

Me Gusta Mango Mucho

While studying abroad in Spain we use to shop religiously at Mango (and Zara, and Pull and Bear, and Blanco and...), so I'm surprised that I haven't bought anything from www.mangoshop.com. Like TopShop, Mango allows you to buy their clothing online, so you can be stylish even if you don't live in New York, Barcelona or London (and that's no thanks to Zara, H&M and Uniqlo).

So in honor of online shopping (in my case, online window shopping), here are some Mango highlights:

Many of you already know that Penelope and Monica Cruz have their own celebrity fashion line with Mango. While it's no Kate Moss for TopShop, it's a solid collection with some really nice feminine pieces.

I especially love this short sleeve jacket, pillbox-like cap and strapless dress:

Here are a few of my non-Cruz Mango favorites. A relaxed gray top, high-rise wide-leg jeans and a red jersey dress.

CL

Black and White Friday

Here are some more quick outfit pics we took in our new apartment. Yessiree, that is a spiral staircase up to our loft! We think it ads a little drama to the usual outfit photo.
On Friday, Cath and I both wore black and white without planning it. Cath is a little more laid-back-Mick-Jagger (tight pants) and I went mod.

Cath:
white shirt- asos.com
vest- american apparel
black pants- cheap mondays
shoes- target

Lar:
mod tunic: forever21.com
leggings: old navy
black boots: target

Flight of the Conchords: Foux Da Fa Fa

How the AsianCajuns brush up on their French language skills.

Outfit: Thursday

This beautiful winged blouse is from my lovely friend Karen, who is currently residing in Paris. I feel so very French when wearing this. Merci beaucoup, mon ami!

See the video above for how I feel when I'm feeling frenchie (and can only use my intermediate French skills to express myself).

LL

Sneak Peek

Yipppee! Finally- internet at the new place. We've felt a bit blue not blogging so we will probably be posting a bit more than usual to make up for it.
Here's a little peak of our decorating scheme for the living area: sage green, brown, creme/white. Well spotted to those Ikea fans out there. We love their cubicle shelves. We'll post more decor pics soon!

LL

No Internet Still-- Eek!

Dear Loyal Blog Readers,

We greatly apologize for this long delay! We still have no internet at our fabulous, new apartment (I am clandestinely typing on my work computer at the moment). That should be remedied today and then we promise you millions of blog posts (outfit pics, photos of the new place, the usual Decatur/Atlanta goodies, etc.).
We hope you all have enjoyed the last few days of summer!

The AsianCajuns (LL)

Moving on Up

We're moving up to the top floor in our apartment building this weekend. We'll post as soon as we're done!

CL

Peter, Bjorn & John featuring The Clientele

We saw quite a good show at Variety Playhouse tonight. The Clientele opened with some great tunes and self-effacing jokes. The band is from England, but they've played in Atlanta a couple of times. I hope they visit again soon. I'd like to see a show where they're the headliners.

Of course Peter, Bjorn & John were great in all their Swedish loveliness. Peter, the lead singer, really hams it up on stage and the band as a whole is really charismatic. Their fashion sense isn't half bad either. Peter wore a white button-up with a gray blazer and matching, tight jeans - a very nice outfit, but the jeans seemed a little tight for his scissor kicks. Bjorn opted for a shrunken motorcycle/bomber black jacket and I couldn't really tell what John was wearing, but he looked mighty nice behind the drums.

In the images below the blue blur is a shot of The Clientele and the orange blur is Peter, Bjorn & John.


We took some outfit pictures in the alley near Variety Playhouse. The painting below is part of a mural on the side of Seven Stages.


We were taken with the "Oh Jennifer mi amor" artwork on the Ragorama wall - so passionate...and such an upturned nose!

CL

Quick Outfit Pic

This is not my most comfortable outfit (look at them heels), but it happened to be photographed a few times today so I thought I would post it. I do love aqua + red.

Blurry photo at work...

Shirt- NY&Co. many moons ago
Skirt- Ann Taylor ""
Shoes- Le Tarjay
Scarf- Tarjay (proenza schouler)
sunglasses- Urban Outfitters

LL

This Week's Wish List

(Clockwise from top right)

• Tord Boontje Second Shadow Light from Heliotrope
• Sunglasses from Urban Outfitters
• Banana Republic's Malachite for Women
• Anything from The Body Shop in honor of Dame Anita Roddick
• IPod Nano in green

CL

Designer Runway Uniform - Spring 2008 RTW

Every fashion junkie in the world knows that it's New York fashion week for Spring 2008. For those of you who aren't aware of this fact, you've either been living under a rock for the past two weeks or you haven't been reading Vogue, Style.com and a ridiculous amount of fashion blogs like I have.

Needless to say, every angle of fashion week is being covered by a number of bloggers and publications, so I've decided to forgo any runway collection posts on this blog. Trust me, there are many more people out there that can analyze, summarize and review these recent collections better than I can. I find all the clothing a bit overwhelming, which is why I prefer to look at what the actual designers are wearing.

In general most designers keep their outfits simple during their shows (exceptions include John Galliano, Betsy Johnson and Anna Sui). In fact, there almost seems to be a designer day-of-show uniform.

Black and white:

Narciso Rodriguez, Doo Ri, Carolina Herrera

Blue button-up with jeans:

Marc Jacobs, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler, Derek Lam

Classic white shirt & khakis:

Jeremy Laing, Peter Som

Black cardigan:

Phillip Lim, Kate and Laura Mulleavy of Rodarte

CL

Not Very Vera

Vera Wang's Simply Vera line for Kohl's came out today. Although I haven't seen the clothes in person, I'm a little disappointed with the overall collection. It's not nearly as feminine as her RTW line and even some of the shoes and pants have a very suburban/Kohl's feel to them. I think the strongest pieces are her dresses (top left) and sleepwear (top right and middle row). There are a couple of long knitted gloves that I really like - although I don't know if I like them enough to spend $35. The shoes in the bottom right image are the only ones I liked. The rest of the shoes seemed kind of clunky or bland. Also, unlike Target's Go International or Steve and Berry's SJP Bitten line, Simply Vera has a higher price point than other clothing at Kohl's.


I actually really like this Simply Vera color block dress (left) even though - or maybe because - it reminds me of the dress Julie Andrews wears in the opening scene of The Sound of Music.


At first I thought these knitted items were neck warmers (which are very popular this year), but they're actually headbands. I really like how they're twisted and better yet, I really like how I can make one of these myself. I might not be able to knit a sweater, but a Simply Vera knitted headband knock-off should be no problem!


CL

Atlanta Shop News

According to last week's Atlanta Business Chronicle, Urban Outfitters will be moving into the old Market One spot near the Majestic Diner at the corner of Virginia Highland and Ponce. This will be the second U.O. in Atlanta and closer to my apartment. So on a purely selfish level I'm glad to hear that I no longer have to drive out to Lenox Mall to shop at one of my favorite chain stores. Plus, it'll be right next to 7 Mississippi, a cute clothing boutique that opened up about a year ago.

JCrew in Paris

As I've mentioned before, I don't often shop at J.Crew. Nevertheless, I still like looking through the catalog every once in a while because I love how the fashion shoots are stylized. The 3 images below are from the fall campaign. They make me want to hop on a plane to Paris. Of course if I could find enough money to fly to the city of lights I would be staying in hostels and hauling a backpack around town. Come to think of it, one of these outfits costs about as much as a flight to Europe, so I'm content to just enjoy the images and save up for some travelling.

CL

Faulkner with Strings Attached

Marionettes and Faulkner. We're Serious, it's Genius! Trust Us...

We promise we will return to our fashionista selves shortly, but we beseech you, if you are anywhere in the Atlanta area this is not to be missed. Sept. 6-Sept. 23 at PushPush Theatre, Haverty Marionettes are performing an adaptation of William Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

I know, I know, we thought the same thing that you're thinking now. We were not particularly big fans of either Faulkner or marionettes (or so we thought)... but we promise you, the creativity of Haverty Marionettes and (we hate to say it) the genius of Faulkner, really work. The marionettes, the shadow puppets, the musicians, the actors/puppeteers, the set design all kept us entranced for 2 hours of southern gothic greatness on strings.

PushPush Theatre is located right in East Decatur Station off of College Ave. Conveniently, one of the best restaurants around, Duck's Cosmic Kitchen (home of the most amazing doughnuts ever- yes better than bliss itself, the KrispyKreme) is located just by PushPush. We stopped there for dinner first and were pleasantly surprised to find it was half-price wine night on Thursdays. What are you guys waiting for? We totally planned the perfect evening for you and your eccentric, foodie buddy. Enjoy!

Festival Aftermath

I hope a lot of you got to make it out to Decatur this weekend: beautiful weather, funnel cakes, free t-shirts, and most importantly books and author talks. Can you think of a better combination? I know it might seem strange to mix carnival food stuffs and higher, intellectual pursuits, but take my word for it, together they are like bread and butter. Here are a few quick pics from the weekend:

Cath looking effortlessly chic and festival ready. See that light blue Book Fest tee? That means power, people... well she did get to walk around with a walkie-talkie (she's on the Festival's committee).

I'm wearing my new favorite t-shirt from the Wren's Nest (click here if you'd like to sport one yourself). Cath bought me these spiffy red "ray-bans" from Urban Outfitters.

This is the creation of our friend and book fest coordinator extraordinaire, Joe. This is one of the many centerpieces he made for the tables at the Book Fest VIP party.

A quick collage of some Book Fest remnants: (from top left, clockwise) Beneath the Neon by Matthew O'Brien, Sin in the Second City by Karen Abbott, my new Wren's Nest tee (yep- same one I wore yesterday- it really is my new favorite shirt), the official Book Festival program.

LL