http://www.articletrader.com/ Articles at ArticleTrader en-us http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/are-you-ready-for-valentines-day.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/are-you-ready-for-valentines-day.html Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:09:04 -0600
Finding the right Valentine's Day gift for that special someone in your life can sometimes seem like a bit of a chore, especially if you wait until the last minute and then have to rush around trying to find something when almost everything is already out-of-stock! Do yourself a favor this year and don't wait until the last minute to start thinking about what to get your honeybunch! Start your search now for the perfect gift and by the time February 14th rolls around, your special day will be stress-free, relaxing, romantic, and most of all, fun!

When looking for a Valentine's Day gift, there are many different online stores that stock a fabulous selection of unique Valentine's Day Gifts including sexy lingerie, heels, and Valentine's Day Jewelry with lots of hearts & kisses. There are literally hundreds of thousands of online shopping sites dedicated to Valentine's Day, and with so many to choose from, hunting for the perfect gift can become quite time consuming.

Can't make up your mind because of the vast amount of inventory available out there? Why not purchase a gift certificate to give to that special someone and let them pick out whatever they want?! Most stores have gift cards in increments of $25, $50, $75, $100, $150 and beyond.

We advise purchasing your gift certificate around the end of January to allow your special guy or gal enough time to pick out their item(s) for arrival prior to Valentine's Day. The two most important things to keep in mind while shopping for Valentine's Day Gifts are make it fun, and make it special.

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Tatyana owns Babygirl Boutique, an online store in Portland, Oregon. Her boutique carries a variety of retro inspired, indie, alternative, and rockabilly clothing labels including Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Shoes, and an assortment of lingerie for Valentine's Day or any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/christmas-lingerie-to-jingle-his-bells.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/christmas-lingerie-to-jingle-his-bells.html Thu, 08 Nov 2007 00:00:00 -0600
A popular Christmas lingerie item this season is the Santa’s Little Helper costume, complete with a hunter green and white sexy elf ensemble. Another sure fire hit is the ever-so sexy red and white fur-trimmed Miss Santa Claus outfit. If these don’t suit you, how about a Christmas-inspired g-string with a red holiday bow as the string? It doesn’t have to be over-the-top. We’re sure that any of these Christmas lingerie items will help make your holiday season a happy one.

Your man will enjoy seeing you in a gorgeous Santa lingerie outfit. Giving the gift of Christmas lingerie gives your partner the idea that all you want for Christmas is them, and that thought alone will help give you both a greater, more sensual holiday experience.

Go ahead and take a quick break from baking those Christmas cookies, shopping and putting up your tree, and coax your man into the bedroom by modeling your new sexy Christmas lingerie for him and present yourself as his ultimate holiday gift!

Don’t forget that Christmas lingerie and Sexy Santa costumes are for women of all ages. Are you getting older, but still have a fun side that you like to show off? Just because you’re getting older, that doesn’t mean you have to dress like an old person. Babygirlboutique.com has you covered on fun and festive holiday & Christmas lingerie items for all ages.

Christmas lingerie shopping is easier to do online. With the click of a mouse, you will save yourself hours of frustration trying to find parking at your local superstores.


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Tatyana Cathcart owns BabygirlBoutique.Com, an online store in Portland, Oregon. Her boutique carries a variety of vintage reproduction, retro inspired, indie, and alternative labels including Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, Christmas lingerie and an assortment of sexy pinup style and lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/retro-clothing.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/retro-clothing.html Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500 retro clothing is once again back in play.

The most important thing that you will need to consider is where you can find retro clothing. Remember, buying the original clothes from many years ago may not be an option. Luckily, there are many retro clothing shops that are sure to meet your needs. The only thing that you need to do is determine where these stores are located, and then from there you can get started with the actual shopping.

Your best bet for finding retro clothing is the internet. There may be a store or two in your area that sells some of these pieces, but if you want the largest selection you will need to rely on the internet. This will give you the chance to find plenty of selections, and of course, you can also shop around for the prices that will best suit your needs.

Even if you think that a retro look is too much for you to handle, you should at least try it out. A lot of people look down on retro clothing until they actually try them on. From there, they realize how good they look and they cannot resist buying more and more.

Overall, there is a large group of people who love how they look in retro clothing. Are you going to be next? If you never try these clothes on you will have no way of saying for sure. For this reason, pick up a few articles of retro clothing and see where it takes you!

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BabygirlBoutique.Com features a unique, hand-picked selection of head turning retro, rockabilly, indie and alternative clothing, footwear, jewelry and accessories. Brands include Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, and an assortment of sexy pinup style lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/sexy-adult-halloween-costumes.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/sexy-adult-halloween-costumes.html Tue, 03 Apr 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Do you know what to look for when seeking out the perfect sexy adult Halloween costume? If not, here are three tips that can point you in the right direction.

1. There are many sexy adult Halloween costumes for sale. Make sure that you search through all of them until you find what you like best. After all, you want to look as good as you can, right?

2. Contrary to popular belief, sexy adult Halloween costumes are available for both men and women. And to add to this, there are many costumes that both sexes can purchase. For instance, women can choose sexy costumes that depict nurses, school girls, military girls, officers of the law, and much more.

3. You can purchase sexy adult Halloween costumes in a number of different places. There used to be a time when finding the best costumes may have been difficult to do. This is no longer the case because you can search for sexy adult Halloween costumes both at local stores and online. Keeping an open mind and shopping at more than one store will allow you to find the perfect sexy adult Halloween costume.

As you can imagine, sexy adult Halloween costumes are more popular today than ever before. If you are tired of having no fun on Halloween, you owe it to yourself to buy one of these costumes. They can go a long way in helping you to have the time of your life this Halloween!

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BabygirlBoutique.Com features a unique, hand-picked selection of head turning retro, rockabilly, indie and alternative clothing, footwear, jewelry and accessories. Brands include Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, and an assortment of sexy pinup style lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/hunting-and-gathering-and-the-online-shopper.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/hunting-and-gathering-and-the-online-shopper.html Sat, 24 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500
I think this is particularly true of the international online shopper. We are continuously told by our international customers from Europe, Australia and New Zealand, in particular, that the variety and selection of apparel and accessories available to them locally, in their country of origin, is paltry in comparison with the goods they can "source" from American e-tailers.

This global marketplace is one of the reasons why eBay has been so hugely profitable since its launch. According to Nielsen/NetRatings, 10% of the time Brits spend online, is spent on eBay. However, the global marketplace is rapidly evolving and shopping online is much more secure these days. In addition, eBay has continuously raised their fee structure over the past few years, causing many e-tailers to abandon eBay in favor of reaching the prospective search engine surfing customer.

What these "search engine surfing" customers have discovered is that there is a veritable cornucopia of varied and unique merchandise to be found in online stores these days. Sure, everyone knows about the big online stores. Search engines like to call these stores "Anchor Stores", just like your local mall has it's anchor department store. Yet what online shoppers are discovering in ever-increasing numbers every day is that there are online boutiques that carry a variety of hand-picked, hard-to-find, indie brands and labels. The discovery of these treasure troves by the internet shopper appeals to their genetically programmed hunting and gathering impulse. Let's face it, hunting and gathering was how our species survived for millennia before civilization.

The whole world is at your fingertips when you shop online. This is not only a boon to the international shopping community but to people who live in small towns across the Unites States. Having lived in a small town for 4-5 years myself in Southern Oregon, I can vouch from personal experience that the selection of goods available, particularly unique, interesting merchandise was dismal. In fact, this was the time period in which I started my first e-commerce site. It was called Vintage Jones, as in “jonesin’ for everything vintage”. (Don’t bother googling it, it doesn’t exist any longer) My goal at that time was to serve up a charming and unique selection of vintage-inspired home décor, gifts and accessories. I’ve been hooked on e-commerce ever since.

There are several wonderful shopping sites out there on the web. Big sites, small sites, sites that cater to particular socio-cultural groups, i.e., the greasers, kustom kulture crowd (centered as they are around their built-from-the-ground-up hot rods), the vintage pinup crowd, the gothling crowd (our affectionate term for people of a goth persuasion), rockers, jocks, the artists, the hippies, the hipsters, the yipsters (a terminological hybrid of the the words, "Hipster" and Yuppie), the geeks, the nerds…..Are you feeling like you are back in high school right about now?

The point is that there is a greater selection of "nuts and berries" from which to choose online for the shopper. And, in my opinion, the world is better place for it.

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Tatyana Cathcart owns Babygirl Boutique, an online store in Portland, Oregon. Her boutique carries a variety of vintage reproduction, retro inspired, indie, and alternative labels including Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, and an assortment of sexy pinup style lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/savvy-shoppers-abandon-their-cars-and-park-themselves-in-front-of-their-computers-instead.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/savvy-shoppers-abandon-their-cars-and-park-themselves-in-front-of-their-computers-instead.html Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500
Case in point, I have a couple of lipstick colors that I repeatedly wear from my favorite cosmetic company. And, my "nearby mall" is very nearby, just down the hill, only 2 minutes away. I decided last weekend that I could hop down to my preferred department store and replenish my lipsticks faster than I could buy them online. So, even though I am an avid online shopper I made the decision to hop in my car and brave the parking lots at the mall. BIG mistake. (*groan*)

First, it took me at least 7 turns through the parking lot before I found a spot. Finally, I spotted one and raced to get to it before some one else. I then had to schlepp a good distance in the rainy, cold Portland weather to get inside the store. Once I was inside my favorite department store, I discovered they were having a big "event" in the cosmetics department. (*double triple groan*)

I stood at the counter of my favorite cosmetic line for about 20 minutes before someone acknowledged me. I, then, had to wait another 10 minutes while the associates rummaged through their stock looking for "my colors" and traded me off between employees who were busy serving several customers at once. At long last one stressed employee popped her head up from behind the counter and informed me they were out of stock of my lipstick colors. The associate tried to call my attention to the new "Spring Palette" so as not to lose a sale but I wasn't interested.

I turned around and headed right back out of the store and into the cold, rainy weather and back across the football field-sized parking lot to my car, into which I hopped and proceeded to drive right back home in order to park myself in front of my computer and my favorite online cosmetics store's site.

I had to wait three days for my lipsticks to arrive on my doorstep but the ease and effortlessness of shopping from the comfort of my home in front of my computer was worth the wait a million times over when compared to the frustration of braving the crowds at my recent sojourn to the mall only to be turned away empty handed, which brings me to the next topic in this 7-part article series: the wider selection of products available online for the savvy shopper!

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Tatyana Cathcart owns Babygirl Boutique, an online store in Portland, Oregon. Her boutique carries a variety of vintage reproduction, retro inspired, indie, and alternative labels including Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, and an assortment of sexy pinup style lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]> http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/jeeper-creepers-feast-your-peepers-on-these-radioactive-threads.html http://www.articletrader.com/shopping/fashion/jeeper-creepers-feast-your-peepers-on-these-radioactive-threads.html Wed, 21 Mar 2007 00:00:00 -0500
No discussion of the world of fashion in the 1950’s would be complete without examining the profound impact World War II had on the industry. Europe and North America had traditionally looked to Paris, the international capitol of fashion, for stylistic inspiration and guidance in this realm but with the German invasion of Paris, this link was severed and designers and manufacturers in the rest of the world were forced to rely on domestic talent.

There was also a shortage of fabrics and trimmings used in clothing during the war, and rationing systems that regulated the quantity of clothing, which could be purchased, were introduced in countries like Britain. This climate caused wartime fashion to become very functional, almost militaristic in appearance. The typical wartime outfit in Britain, for example, was the tailored suit with squared off shoulders, tapered waist and just-below-the-knee length skirt. Shoes and bags, and accessories were also functional, with the exception of hats. The materials for making hats were not rationed so large, bold designs in hats were characteristic. But generally speaking, the range of garments being produced was extremely limited. Little elegant evening wear was being produced, for example, because textiles like silk were needed to make parachutes. There was also a ban on the production of hosiery for the same reason. Hosiery was still being made from silk, as nylon was not yet widely available.

As British and American designers were not eclipsed by Parisian designers during the war, they emerged in the post war era with a much sharper profile in the fashion world. Both countries had made significant progress in mass-market clothing production, also known as “ready-to-wear” clothing, in part because of having to produce massive amounts of uniforms during the war.

After the war, women returned to the home and to a less active role in society. Femininity returned to the fashion styles of the day. No longer curtailed by the rationing of textiles and restrictions in buying, they wanted clothing with reams of fabric. Even make-up was heavy – many women went through their day with a full painted face compete with dark eye liner, colored eye shadow, mascara, rouge, to dark red lipstick. The cosmetics and fragrance industries boomed. Women reveled in their access to products that had been of short supply during the war, and perfect grooming was essential.

The silhouette of the day in the early to mid 1950’s leaned toward the formal, and the tailored. Women wanted to present themselves as mature, elegant, and sophisticated. It was important to look "every inch the lady" from head to toe, and this was the female cultural norm that was conditioned in every girl from a very young age from her authority figures in addition to the movies she saw at the theater on Saturday night. Even the adventurous world of high fashion popularized on the runways and catwalks of the Paris fashion shows remained formal.

Watching the popular Hollywood “pictures” of the day can provide a fun study in 1950’s fashion styles. My favorite film from the era is “How to Marry a Millionaire” featuring sex siren, Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall, and Betty Grable. It is a visual feast of 1950’s fashion not to be missed! And the image of female beauty of the day was a curvy one with shapely hips and a prominent bust, although it was important that a women’s waist be small. Many women wore girdles, waist cinchers and shapers underneath their clothing to achieve this desired image. Women that collect vintage clothing today will attest to the fact that the waist dimensions of vintage dresses and skirts feel abnormally small when compared to that of the hips and bust.

Tailored suits, dresses with bolero jackets, twin sets, and shirt waisted dresses with full pleated swing skirts were worn during the day, and full-length cocktail gowns with elbow length opera gloves and bold statement jewelry were worn for evening wear. The 1950’s were a time of practiced etiquette – a time when every occasion demanded a studied attention to clothes and accessories. For example, the way you dressed when you went to have lunch with the ladies was different than the way you dressed when you went grocery shopping or attended your children’s school functions. A popular style for the 1950’s woman who wanted to appear provocative was the wiggle dress or tight-fitting, high-waisted pencil skirt.

The 50’s were time of prosperity. Families had more disposable income and, let’s not forget, lots of children! They don’t call it the baby boom era for nothing. As a result, a brand new market emerged catering to young people. Many teenagers wanted more relaxed clothing styles than those of their parents. Teenage girls favored tight sweaters and cardigans worn over pointy “bullet bras”, paired with full circle skirts with stiff nylon petticoats underneath for fullness. Teenagers across the world were dancing to the new American rock-n-roll music and the full skirt and petticoat combination made for quite a show as you spun around on the dance floor. Poodle skirts were worn with black and white saddle shoes at sock hops where teenagers danced to Elvis Presley. Many experts agree that it was in the 1950’s that the fashion and music industries became forever linked.

Tight jeans and pants were a popular fifties clothing style with both teenage boys and girls. Pedal pushers became e a very trendy style of pants for girls. “Good girls”, Annette Funicello and Doris Day popularized this fashion look for young girls in the 50’s. The “greaser look” for young men, also unique to the 1950’s, was distinguished by the white tee shirt and black motorcycle jacket, greased back hair and sideburns, popularized by James Dean and Marlon Brando.

From the mid 1950’s, tailored suits from Italian designers, in particular, began to represent “the ultimate in modernity” for the modern 50’s gent. Italian clothing was being imported to the United States and Britain in greater quantities than ever before. Even domestic menswear manufacturers and tailors were advertising their single-breasted suits with tapered trouser pants as being made “in the Italian” style. Striped ties were popular for men, and the love affair with Italian menswear didn’t end there, Italian leather shoes with pointed toes were extremely in vogue in the world of 50’s men’s fashion.

Toward the end of the decade, designers began to present less structured clothing. They began rebelling against the tight-waisted, tight-fitting, full-skirted styles of the post-war years. Chanel’s relaxed sweater suit designs for women were gaining in popularity. Fashion was trending toward more comfort and wear ability. The sack dress from the late 1950’s was the precursor to some of the shift dresses that became popular in the 60’s when hemlines went shockingly up! That, however, is another story. I, for one, will always be a fan of 1950’s clothing. It was a decade of vibrant fashion activity that celebrated some of the best qualities of the traditional gender roles, including all things feminine for women and a strong masculine archetype for men.

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Article author: Tatyana Cathcart owns Babygirl Boutique, an online store in Portland, Oregon. Her store carries a variety of vintage reproduction, retro inspired, indie, and alternative labels including Stop Staring Clothing, Paper Doll Productions, Hell’s Belles Handbags, Sweet Romance Jewelry, Anne Koplik Designs, Retro Shoes, and an assortment of sexy pinup style lingerie for any time of the year! Local pickup available. Free Shipping.

Source: http://www.articletrader.com ]]>