Natalie Portman Won't Wear Meat

Unlike most vegetarians, the annoyingly-perfect Natalie Portman puts her money where her mouth is, or in vegan speak - just says "no" when it comes to wearing leather. As a result, when it comes to shoes, she's been relegated to Payless and Stella McCartney (although, we imagine things could be worse). But all that's about to change.

The actress has designed a line of animal-friendly shoes for NYC shoe boutique Te Casan that are (oxymoron?) synthetic yet stylish (witness the red mary janes at left!). The line, which officially goes on sale in February, can be pre-ordered in 2 weeks, starting on January 15th. Shoes will hover around $200 with 5% of the proceeds going to some animal rights org.

Frankly, $200 is a bit pricey for vegan shoes if you ask us, but we're happy to see Te Casan get the press - they are a rockin' shoe store where you can find limited edition shoes from up and comers - in the most fashionable of settings. Te Casan? Te amo!

Breaking: Steve Florio Dies

Steve Florio, the former CEO (and until a year ago, vice chairman) of Conde Nast, has died at the age of 58, reports WWD. According to a company spokeswoman, the cause was complications due to a heart attack.

Sale Update: It's like Xmas Early (oh wait...)

Anya Hindmarch has an absolutely gorgeous array of accessories on sale right now that are all pretty cat-fight worthy. Top picks include:

From top left clockwise
Bogart Tote: Was $995. Now $696.
Annalisa Day Pumps: Were $485. Now $389.
Black patent and navy Jourdan: Was $995. Now $696.
Gold Hand Woven Sydney: Was $895. Now $647.
Savour Kindness Tote: Was $595. Now $416.
Slate Beverly Shoulder Bag: Was $995. Now $695.


Sadly, the best deal is the only item we don't want. If your preference runs towards poodle purses though - you can score the deal of the day:
This ugly little number is now $56 from a purported $800+

T or F: Aj Stewart (of ANTM) models for Bloomies

In perusing Bloomingdales.com, I came across a photo of someone most familiar. Doesn't the pic below look like America's Next Top Model: Season 7's AJ Stewart (bottom pic)? Can anyone confirm? Deny?

Lions. And tigers. And SALES. Oh my!

It's like sale-apalooza today! From 8am store openings to early-bird specials, you can practically name your price on thousands of pieces of merchandise with little more effort than a simple clickity click click.

Today's best sale is at Saks, where they have slashed prices on MJ, Dolce & Gabbana, Giuseppe Zanotti, Pedro Garcia, Prada, Brian Atwood, Chloe, Ferragamo, Adam + Eve, DVF, et al by up to 70%.

Coming in at a close second is Bloomingdales, where sale accessories and apparel are an additional 50% off. H&B snagged this leopard jacket by Fashionista (how apropos!), for $96. Meow!

Kate Spade, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf have also cut merchandise up to 50% but the selection and prices aren't nearly as good as the aforementioned sales. Have you gotten any great deals? H&B says, "Share your wares!"

Happy Happy & Merry Merry

We'll take the pink Corvette, too

Today's crush comes from the wacky world of Pat Fields:



As part of her Barbie by Patricia Field line, the designer has created this "I want my dream house," tee - an overpriced, but cheeky find if ever there was one. At $58, it ain't a bargain but hey - neither is the dream house! Find it at Patricia Fields.

Does Anyone Want to Chip In?

Big (and long expected) news from Prada today. The company has finally announced it is set to launch an IPO, says WWD. Depending on market conditions, the offering is planed for 2008.

AA Does Fashion

It's a sad state of affairs when the accessory du jour is inspired by alcohol monitoring anklets but that's just what Czar Karl used as muse in his spring '08 accessories collection. As part of his spring '08 Chanel runway show, models paraded down the aisle with mini pouches attached to their ankles, stirring images of La Lohan and Martha Stewart.

While the pieces are certainly fanny pack preferable, they get a big stamp of ridiculous from this fashette.

What do you say?

Slimane Chances?

Could Hedi Slimane be Heding back to LVMH?

WWD is reporting that less than a year from leaving Dior Homme, Hedi Slimane has renewed talks with LVMH chair Bernard Arnault about the possibility of launching an eponymous fashion house. A favorite among celebrities including Madonna, Nicole Kidman and Linda Evangelista, Slimane has a cult following that is said to fuel Mr. Arnault's interest, but he isn't the only one with an eye on the designer. According to rumors, Diesel's Renzo Rosso (who also backs Margiela and Sophia Kokosalaki) is also talking to Slimane about financial backing.

Splendid Weekend Reads

From Splendicity - the destination for splendid style, come the splendid best post of the week.



BEAUTY
Shades Of U announces the Grand Prize Winner of its Holiday Look Contest.
Snarkstress wonders if "The Katie" will soon sweep the nation.
A Touch of Blusher brings you some exciting spring 2008 makeup collections.
Kyle at Face Candy tries out Senna Cosmetics.
makeup loves me is giving away two prescriptives limited edition illuminators!
eBeautyDaily is touting the benefits of a tourmaline hair dryer from Conair - a great gift for just about anyone!
Let's Go Shopping Reviews Coastal Scents Silk Cover Light Mineral Foundation.
Beauty Banter offers an insider's look at the beauty and fashion of the A-list celebrities that attended this years Hollywood Life Breakthrough Awards.

FASHION
STYLEnosh ponders what to wear to the holiday party.
She Knows Best shows us how Quentin Tarantino Rocks The Philippines Barong Tagalog.
Take a peek at the Holiday Look for the Style Tots Kidlets.
Hot Mama Daily asks: would YOU wear a garter purse?
The Fashionable Kiffen reviews Forbes Magazine's Top Five Trends for 2008.
My Wardrobe Today offers a few promo codes and tips to get those last minute holiday purchases at a primo price!
Wardrobe Oxygen reviews HARDWARE Handbags and is offering a free bag to one lucky reader!

SHOPPING
Teen Style Lounge has found the perfect Diva-lightful last-minute gift idea.
Style It Less has your chance to win 2 Eco-Friendly Totes From Origins Organics.
The Scented Life wants to know - would you buy Perfume for your Pet?
The Latest Luxe shares some stocking stuffer wishes, and proves vanity really is worthwhile.
Haute & Bothered's got exclusive invites to the haute members-only shop Ideeli.
Get 20% off Stylagio ClipChic purse hooks at Style Goodies!
Aging Fabulous has some helpful Holiday shopping tips.
CelebLOOK tells us where the celebs are shopping for Christmas.

Be Dazzled This Weekend

The only thing better than Champagne this holiday season? Having your name (or you know, a friend or relative's) bedazzled onto a bottle. Moet & Chandon has set up shop in SoHo to create champers couture - personalized bottles of champagne, produced within 2 days. The store, which is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays throughout December, can personalize any size bottle of Moet & Chandon in Swarovski crystals with up to 7 letters or numbers for $30.

Bottles have to be brought to the store, although they can be purchased next door.

Boutique Moet
455 West Broadway
Open 11am - 8pm
Friday - Sunday

What a Stila

Stila is currently holding an online warehouse sale, selling its cosmetics at up to 70%. We're thinking stocking stuffers!

H&B Exclusive: Ideeli Memberships

How does H&B say "Happy Holidays?" By exclusively offering free memberships to the haute private accessory e-shop, Ideeli, natch. Now, in an Ideeli world, we'd have unlimited passes to go around, but for exclusivity's sake, we've got 100 for the taking, while supplies last (we've always wanted to say that!).

Membership (and readership!) sure has its privileges, so we'd get in before beauties like these Chloe and Be&D bags go up for grabs:


Click here while the clicking's good. Happy holidays! And, of course, happy shopping!

Champers and Chantecaille

Last night, H&B went to SoHo's Space NK (if you haven't visited this beauty emporium, go and go now!) to fete the launch of TotalBeauty.com, a brand new website that boasts a 'Product Library' full of reviews of just about every beauty product under the sun (it already has some 35,000 products reviewed from over 220 brands), a 'Beauty Scout' search feature that offers members the option to customize the site and receive recommendations based on skin type, budget, favorite formulas and colors; and Total Beauty TV - a how to video archive.

Gathering with about 75 fellow bloggers and editors, the evening was beauty-full. Armed with $50 Space NK gift cards, guests spent the evening shopping, swapping (tips) and sipping - a perfect evening if ever there was one. Choosing from By Terry, Laura Mercier, Nars, Lipstick Queen, etc., H&B walked away with Chantecaille's pot gloss in Mimosa and Luminous Eye Liner in Allegro.

Beauty-Full!

Uber E-xclusives

Shopping's latest trend is borrowing a page from the nightclub industry: call it red velvet robing, if you're not on the list, you just might miss the discount shopping party. The ultimate in shopping exclusivit-E, a flood of new sites have cropped up offering invite-only online sample sales - with invites coming from existing member, or occasionally through listserve sites like DailyCandy and Julie B.

Gilt, for example, recently offered members of RareDaily's listserve entre into its private online community, an invite that includes private sales by Alessandro Dell’Acqua, Kwiat and Marchesa (going on now and selling this hot frock below - for just $270 - that you may recognize from the red carpet - I'm pretty sure ALL of the Desperate Housewives - namely Felicity Huffman and Eva Longoria - wore it to at least one awards show.

Typically, these sites host sales for a maximum of 72 hours with discounts as steep as 70%. Quantities are oft limited, but if you can act fast, they certainly can be worth your while.

Ideeli, my favorite of the bunch, offers one designer bag (or other haute accessory) at a time from all the top names - including Gucci, Zac Posen, Valentino, Chloe, Prada, Botkier, Celine, etc. Members receive an email that an item has gone on sale, and then it's a hop, click and a jump to get it in your shopping cart.

Editors' Closet, another invite-only site, is currently accepting DailyCandy readers with referral code: dailycandy@editorscloset.com. Upcoming sales include Lalique.

HauteLook is open to the public, but you do have to register. Currently they are having a LaRok sale (sequins, sequins everywhere sequins!) which ends tomorrow; and Rock & Republic and YaYa are in its queue.

And, in what seems like a perfect segue, Members Only, the omnipresent 80s jacket is back. Proof positive of a trend in the making.

Meatpacking 'Em In

Friday saw the none-too-quiet opening of the Meatpacking District's first Apple store - a well situated corner behemoth (for Manhattan standards) at 14th and 9th that hopefully will drive traffic to its new neighbors DVF, Jeffrey, Bodum, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, 10,000 Little Things and La Perla.

Joining the just opened Apple store is Adam, Adam Lippes' first freestanding store (shown above), located at 678 Hudson. While the store, which opened Monday, obviously predominantly carries Adam apparel (men's & women's), it also according to WWD, sells "select accessories, such as Nancy Gonzalez clutches, home goods, books, fine art and select home furnishings."

"Everything is for sale," said Lippes, founder, creative director and CEO of Adam Adam Lippes. "It's going to be hard for me to part with some of these things, but the idea was to have a store that people can come to and feel like they are in this amazing loft space that they want to live in."

Also now in the Meatpacking mix, in addition to Apple and Adam, is (no, not Eve) Helmet Lang, who just took out a 2-year lease on a temporary space at 819 Washington while its parent company, Link Theory Co. Ltd. searches for a more permanent (but still nearby) location. Said Andrew Rosen, pres. and co-CEO of Link Theory US, "I'm happy with the way it came out. I'm happy with the business. It's going to be next to Standard Hotel when it opens next year, and when the High Line [park] opens in the fall, it's right there. It's a great spot."

Haute Off the Presses: H&B!!!

H&B was just named (so what if it was by herself) one of People mag's 100 most beautiful people. We always knew this day would come. *Sigh* Being 100 of the most beautiful is SO haute!

Before you die of jealousy, head over to MagMyPic - surely there's a Vogue with your name on it, cabbages!

H&B PSA: The Season of Giving

If you are looking for some luxe, unique gifts (even if only for yourself!), H&B recommends hitting up Clydes on Madison (either in person or online) tomorrow, for a shopping event near and dear to her heart. On Tuesday, December 11th only, the haute apothecary will donate 10% of all sales to Sanctuary for Families, a nonprofit agency dedicated to serving the needs facing domestic violence victims and their children.

Practically ground zero for the Upper East Side social set, Clyde's sells luxe, luxe, luxe bath and beauty products (hello Mason Pearson!), cosmetics and gift items that are sure to be crowd pleasers (who doesn't love splurgalicious sundries???).

Giving in every sense of the word has never been easier. Which reminds us, with any purchase of $50 or more, you'll receive a special edition Clyde's cloth tote bag sporting the Sanctuary for Families logo.

Clyde's is located at 926 Madison Avenue (@ 74th St.) and will be open from 9am - 7:30pm.

Take a Bike

Are bicycles the new black? Judging by the latest roll outs (roll outs, get it?), they just might be. We've been aware for sometime that Chanel has a new quilted bag with a side of bike in stores now as part of its spring/summer '08 collection (retails for $12K) but we've just caught wind that they aren't alone.

Paul Smith partnered with Mercian to design a limited edition range of cycles in an array of colored stripes, bien sur, for fall/winter '07 and Gucci, too, has a made-to-order bicycle.


Who would you like to see take a bike next?

Never Thought I'd See The Day

Have you seen the pigs flying? Is hell experiencing sub-zero temperatures? Sounds logical if we're about to make this pronouncement - we are officially sale-d out - seriously, we don't even want to hear of another friends & family, private event or sample sale. It's just...too much! Do we have a fever? Maybe. Fashion fatigue? Never!

Doctor, Doctor - gimme the news... Anyone else out there have similiar symptoms?

Haute Off The Presses: Counterfeit Ring Goes Bust

WWD reports that 10 suspects were charged today in a $200 million counterfeit smuggling case - one of the largest fakery busts ever, according to federal prosectutors.

Snagged in Jersey at the Port Newark-Elizabeth Marine Terminal from China (really? China? You don't say!), more than 100 shipping containers filled with faux jeans, sneakers and handbags by Nike, Chanel, Burberry, Polo Ralph Lauren and Baby Phat were seized. But here is where it really gets shady readers: Where is the Louis Vuitton merch? $200 mil worth of fakes and nary a brown logo in sight?

Something sounds fishy and we're not talking about Port Newark!

H&Js: This one's for you

Dearest H&Js (Haute & Jewish, natch):

Wishing you a most festive Chanukkah filled with tons of razzle dazzle and a latke or two.

Cheers,

H&B

Marc Jacobs: Just Say Cheese

For the Easter, there was a spring chicken, so is it any (winter) wonder, that come holiday season, Marc Jacobs has fashioned his West Village boutique (as well as those in LA, San Fran and Savannah) into a snow-dusted photo booth complete with tutu donning employees and a swan-laden paddleboat? Shoppers can have their pics taken in the boat - for a most cheeky, er, cheery holiday memento.



[photos via TKE Productions]

Galosh Almighty!

Well, well, wellies...

Yesterday's East Coast ickiness had us once again remembering that we are not wellie off (translation: we need rainboots, STAT!). And since no ordinary galoshes will do (What do want? Style! When do we want it? Now!), we set off in search of the perfect "go ahead and rain on our parade" beauties, er, booties...

To our surprise, the solution came from a one Sperry Top-Sider (a brand my New England compatriots surely know well) - reasonably priced, decently wedged and super cute to boot (pun intended), we are almost (almost!) looking forward to the next drizzle.
Sperry Top-Sider Sadie Rain Boot, Nordstrom, $69

Spare Change

Next time someone tells you one person can't affect change, recall this dear readers:

Back in the day, H&B wrote an open letter to Paul Mitchell complaining about their awful new mousse bottles - they require fingers of steel! They break after 1-2 uses! Well, take a page fashettes! Today, I am happy to report that they have gone back to the old style - a mere 2 months after the calamitous switch.

To anyone out there with curly hair, I:

a) Highly recommend PM's Extra Body Sculpting Foam and

b) Say, "You're welcome."

One small step, cabbages!