Topshop, an enigma

I went to Topshop two weekends back, and purchased a very lovely pair of necklace. The necklace is of golden leaves and very Greek-like. Only when I wore it to work the next morning that I realized that the edge of the leaves is so sharp that it hurts my neck. Argh! Each time  wear it I have to be careful; if I am on the phone and twist my neck, the leaves cut my neck. I have rashes from it today. What a price to pay for fashion! I still love the necklace and will wear it. Usually I like being comfy, but the piece is so original…

Back to Topshop. Did it live up to the hype? No. Was I disappointed? No, because I read negative reviews on Yelp before going, so I knew what to expect. First the good. Topshop has clothes from all over the world. You will find light cotton embroidered tunics and tops from India, patterned tops from Romania, etc. It has a lot of variety and truly original stuff. You will not find the same style of clothes and jewelry elsewhere. The jewelry is IN THE FACE, and I mean in the face and not your usual statement-jewelry. Really large pieces, multi-colored strands of necklace that would look gorgeous with a solid strapless dress, large earrings, and bracelets. Its hard to buy stuff like that and wear it on a regular basis. Now for the bad. It is pricey, much more expensive than it should be for the quality. The jewelry pieces are glued on but can fall off very easily. One piece came off while I was trying. The jewelry is too large.  That is the biggest problem I have with the store – quality does not match price. The packaging is cheap as well. My jewelry piece was a bit delicate, but they did not pack it in a box or zip-lock. They put it in a paper bag and that was it. Even the shoes are not packed in boxes at the cash counter. Really cheap.

Its worth checking out once though just for the variety and some cool pieces. I will wait for sale to get one of the Made in India cotton embroidered tops. I cannot resist embroidery, I was really good at it once. Kate Moss is the face of the brand. Her stuff was okay, nothing to write home about.

Read Full Post »

Back to square one with jumpsuits

I went to Topshop two weekends back – more on that in another post. I saw a petite girl wear jumpsuit-shorts, maybe I should just call it jumpshorts. Just checked and Topshop is calling it a playsuit. Whatever. Anyway, she looked really cute in it. What helped was that the waist was held by an elastic ruching, which made it look very chic. My pet peeve with jumpsuits is the area between the waist and thighs, which may tend to balloon up. But the elastic waist here actually gave it some shape. To think of it, the ruffle one-shoulder took the eye away from the ballooning part as well…So yeah I am warming to jumpshorts with elastic waists… but that is it. I will not budge from my original stance that I HATE jumpsuits and wish the trend would just go away.

Read Full Post »