What I learned while lining up for an H&M designer collaboration

Even though H&M has been creating designer collaborations for 10 years now, I have never put forth the effort to actually shop them. The hype is always insane and from a distance, I always recall seeing reports of people camping in the street then proceeding to trample each other to grab at their most coveted pieces. Yeah, no thanks... But this collection was the exception. As soon as I had heard the announcement from Coachella that the next one would be Alexander Wang, I had to figure out how to prepare myself.


My friend Jeannie has been to nearly every previous collection release and so I looked to her for advice. I quickly read her post on what to expect and I'm so glad she prepared me for what was to come. I think I had a successful haul so I wanted to share my experience. Read on to see what I learned from my experience lining up to shop the collection:

Book time off
Book the day off of work as soon as you know the release date. You will be exhausted from pulling an all-nighter and then the rush of adrenaline from the urgent shopping.

What to bring
November in Toronto is cold. Make sure to dress in warm layers, lots of knits and winter accessories. All of the Toronto locations require you to wait outdoors and overnight temperature dips can make the wait feel endless.

- a friend: people in line are great about holding your spot if you need to go find a washroom at a nearby gas station, but it helps pass the time to have someone there to talk to and remind you why the hell you subjected yourself to this unnecessary feat. I was going to go alone until I found out the day before that our friend Grana of LeGrana was going as well. Thank god for that.
- a folding chair: make yourself comfortable with something to sit on. It seems embarrassing but I saw some dudes who brought mini ikea poang chairs and I was so jealous.
- a warm blanket: it saved my life.
- a good thermos: so you'll have a hot drink to sip at all night.
- snacks: it's an overnight outdoor slumber party! You might as well snack
- entertainment: cards, books, iPads. You'll need them.
- a charger or external battery: your phone will die. Back it up with an external charger.
- a car: if at all possible, bring a friend with a car. You can take shifts in the car and it gives you a place to store all of your chairs and blankets before you go in to shop.

When to line up

As I learned, the first ones in line had arrived at 8am which was a full 24 hours ahead of the release time. The advantage of being amongst the first 10 in line this time around was an exclusive free gift. The gift was a great backpack chair but... Probably not worth 24 hours of time. The photo above was taken at around 6pm-- about 20 people were already in line.
I went home after work to have dinner, pack my bag and prepare myself to arrive at the store for midnight. At midnight, which was 8 hours before the release time, I was 94th in line. This will obviously be different based on location and how many other people decide to show up early. If I were to do it again, I'd still aim to go for midnight. 👌

The wait
The location where I lined up was Yorkdale Mall in the North York part of Toronto. This H&M is located inside the mall but you're not allowed to line up within the mall overnight. The wait is entirely outdoors until 5am when the mall reopens and the entire line is ushered indoors for the final 3 hours of the wait. A lot of people showed up at this time to wait so that they didn't have to be outdoors. Totally makes sense.

The wristbands

Coloured wristbands are handed out to people and they are numbered and have times on them. People are divided into groups of 30 and each group has a designated 10 minute slot to shop. At #94 I was at the front of the 4th group to shop. By the time we were shopping, we heard that the majority of the menswear was gone and I also heard that the shelves were pretty empty by 10.

The 10 minutes of shopping

You're let into the "ring" in order of your wristband number and are constantly instructed not to push or run. 10 minutes doesn't seem like it's a very long time but if you've had months to see the collection online and then a full night to reevaluate your wish list, you're bound to be familiar with every product and price. The staff are there to help you with sizes and to keep things in order and they also continue to tell you how much time you have left. I grabbed everything on my list, Sam's list and then some and finished in 8 minutes with hangers laced on all my fingers and my hands filled with random objects.

Trying
Once you have your loot, you're welcome to go to the fitting rooms and take your time trying it all on. This is highly advised because if things don't fit, the staff will switch a size for you... Provided that there are sizes left in the "ring" which you are not allowed to re enter. If you decide to leave anything in the fitting room, it's instantly off limits to everyone and will be put back into the ring.

Buying

Personally, I tried to restrain myself and stick with buying only the items from a very short wish list that I had mulled over for months. I grabbed everything my friends had wanted too and overall I was really happy with how our position in line allowed us to get our pick of everything in the sizes we needed. Go crazy if you want because there's a 7 day return policy.

Check back soon to see how we styled our picks from the collection!

Peter Pilotto for Target

Some of you may have spent yesterday morning in search for the Peter Pilotto line at Target. Well, that was our morning. I was out of town and visited a remote location around noon and was able to find tonsss of stock. I ended up visiting 4 Targets throughout the day to get some more preferable sizing. We ended up with 21 pieces! I would say that it was an incredibly successful day. We had nabbed a couple of things from the Philip Lim collection back in September but nothing to this extent.


Some of the pieces we grabbed:
Red Iris Print Jacquard Dress, Purple Floral Print Dress, Green Floral Print Belted Dress, Red Iris Print Romper, Black/White Print Bikini Crop Top, Black/White Print Skirt, Black/White Print Bikini Top, Black/White Print Bikini Bottom, Black/White Print Rash Guard, Red Floral Red Print/Lace Blouse, Red Floral Check/Print Skirt, Black/White Print Beach Tote

We also grabbed (not pictured) the Black/White Print Slip-On Shoe, Light Blue Floral/Check Print Pencil Skirt, Green Netting Print Beach Towel, Black/White Print Sunglasses

I'm so excited to wear all our new pieces! Were you able to grab any pieces at your local target?

Yipee October!

Sam here! I looove October. It's not only time to prepare for Halloween but it's also the month where I can enjoy the most delicious foods with my friends and family! Oh autumn, such a good time.
Since I love this month - I'm going to aim to post at least once a day and I'm sorry but it'll be heavily focused on Halloween, I can't help it!

After all, I received these amazing leggings in the mail today - just on time!! They're currently hang drying but I really want to throw together an outfit with these beauties.



They may look familiar because they're a copy of Black Milk Clothing's The Anatomist Negative Leggings. Here is what the originals look like:



Anyways, after this super late blog post..I'm actually going to start preparing for tomorrow's post. Until then...goodnight!

3.1 phillip lim x target canada

This weekend was the much anticipated release of the 3.1 Phillip Lim for Target collection. On September 15th, the hashtag #philliplimfortarget flooded twitter at the strike of midnight. Americans had access to shop the collection online while they rolled out the goods on target.com

I patiently followed the tweets because up here in Canada, we had to wait for the collection to hit the stores on Sunday morning. Target only opened in Canada less than a year ago, so this would be the first designer collection & I wasn't sure whether to expect an H&M designer collection camp-out or complete indifference.

Early in the morning Target Canada updated with a tweet that showed a significant lineup at an unknown store, so we decided to wait for the urgency to clear from the air before slowly sauntering over. After all, none of the Pashli-inspired handbags (priced $35-60) were on my wish list.

After arriving only about an hour and a half after the release, we found two sparse racks of merchandise in the women's section. Bags were completely gone, and most items were down to the final sizes. While my wish list had monochromatic basics and leather jackets on it, we ended up buying two of the flashiest prints in the collection. At $29.99 a pop (or boom?), why not? And with Target's great return policy, there's plenty of time to change your mind (and the potential for some second chances)

The Boom Sweatshirt, another version of Lim's "KA-POW" comic book print sweater, was the last on the rack in size Large. Definitely a lucky find.

derek cardigan glasses, 3.1 phillip lim for target sweatshirt, jeffrey campbell raid wedges.

The leopard dress, in a size small is definitely a relaxed fit but a great addition to my fall work wardrobe with the long sleeves & mustard tone.

aldo beanie, rayban wayfarers, 3.1 phillip lim for target dress, jcrew factory necklace, marc by marc jacobs werdie messenger bag, alexander wang kori booties.

Unfortunately, when I look at the hashtag on Instagram now, it's completely saturated with bag hoarders who have decided to resell their finds immediately. So if you missed out, surely eBay will be handy for the next little while.

Did you lineup for the 3.1 Phillip Lim for Target collection release? What did you end up picking up & how was your experience?

041: to the max(i)

Today I picked up a new purse! Somehow, I've ended up being one of those gals that just carries a tiiiiiny clutch around everywhere. My BFF bought me a cute coach one a couple of Christmases ago & I've gotten used to just carrying it around as a wallet.

Now I have a huuuge camera though & I still haven't switched over entirely to using a larger bag. My latest camera bag that I asked Matt to get for me for my birthday was from ebay & was pretty cheap. Of course, I guess you get what you pay for because within only a few months, the fake leather was ripping completely apart at any point of stress. I don't blame Matt cause I picked the bag myself, but I've got some ~serious problems~ with ebay sellers from Asia now. It's so whack how they'll have pictures & then send you something completely different than what they show or describe. It's happened to Sam & I a couple of times now, ughhhh. *ranty rant*

Anyway, that first camera bag was just a normal purse with a great padded insert (with a velcro divider for keeping your equipment snug & separated) so I was able to hold onto that part of the purse. So I decided to pick up a new hobo-ish messenger that fit my padded insert inside. I grabbed this purse from Aldo that has front zipper pockets reminiscent of the Alexander Wang MAX bag & the padding fit inside it perfectly! new camera bag! YAY!


I'm wearing one of my 50% off finds at value village-- a maxi-length striped sweater dress! Only $5.50!
with my leather ub motojacket, a bow belt, my pewter 1460 doc martens & my H&M bowler hat & my latest obsession-- my prescription sunglasses from zennioptical.com LALALA!

xoxo



ps, we totally went and got mickey d's FREE breakfast biscuits again this morning. I feel so gross :( lol


pps, thank you all for your sweet comments! it's encouraging to know we have followers that care to read about our vain & inane daily lives. haha ♥

Website Pre-Launch!

We've been working like crazy preparing for The Clothing Show this weekend! Running around getting our signage printed, business cards shipped in, tagging our merchandise & of course sewing up new things :)

One of our goals was to have the launch of our website coincide with the clothing show (since we'll be giving away a ton of our new business cards).


like em?

So since we're taking all of our merchandise to the show, we decided to do a pre-launch of our website! The website is all ready for everyone to browse-- everything we've been working on is already in place but nothing can be purchased yet! So feel free to go and take a look at everything!



All items are marked as "Coming Soon", so you can go and scope out all the pics (taken at this shoot!), "like" your favourite items & prepare to shop for them on our official launch next week!

Let us know what you think!
xoxoxo

Toy Story 3!

So in my last post I said that I would be going to see Toy Story 3...so I did and I have to say...it was quite amazing! I knew that it would be the greatest and it was just perfect in every way. I ALMOST cried in the beginning but I definitely cried at the end. Toy Story movies always make me want to keep all my toys forever but sadly I threw the majority of them out last summer! :(
But yeah, I love the new characters like...the Peas in a Pod were SO CUTE! I wonder if they have a plush toy of it because I want it really badly. I thought about making one but that is so much effort ahah...but do I want them that bad? ...Yes...actually I do.



Anyways, I went with my friend Tyler D to see the first showing that we could go to in the city and it was at 3:30pm. We were the randies there because there was just a bunch of parents taking their little ones. This was my first 3D movie other than random shows at Canada's Wonderland...like Spongebob...hahaha! I wasn't very impressed with the 3Dness I just don't really think that it was worth the extra money. It's just extra annoying since I didn't wear contacts and had to wear two pairs of glasses. Yikes!


Oh! I almost forgot...TOTORO was in the friggin movie....WHAT? Tyler and I couldn't believe it! Every single time he appeared on the screen we laughed so hard! He was so cute!

AHAHAHA Totoro is such a creep over there.

Well, I loved the movie oh so very much and if you have not seen it...I recommend you do ASAP! It's fabulous. There are just so many funny parts as well as tearjerkers.

Anyways...moving on. Throughout the week I received some stuff in the mail including the sunglasses I posted about earlier in the week.

 I love XXI for their rings so here are a few I received this week

 Also, the shoes on the left are also from XXI! The ones on the right are Syl's Jeffrey Campbells

They're actually quite comfortable!

I can't forget about the Threadless T-shirts that we got! It was irritating because the mailman came to our house with the package and couldn't even give it to us because they only would accept Certified Cheques or Money Orders for their Cash On Demands. How does that make any sense? I didn't even know how much I owed for duty fees...how could I be prepared with either of those two payments? So, they forced me to drive over to the post office the NEXT day to pick it up.
Well, I couldn't really do anything about it but at least we got it within a week of ordering!
Syl and I bought 13 t-shirts together and my boyfriend wanted one.

This was surprisingly our very first threadless order ever!

These are the prints that we picked...we bought more than one of some of them.

We are SO excited to reconstruct these babies!!

Well, I should be spending some time with my Daddy for Father's Day! I think that I'll go sort his DVDs and Blu-Rays in Alphabetical order! Ahaha! Well, I hope that you're all doing something nice for your Papa today!