During this time of spring showers, waterproof mascara is a gal's best friend. And since Dior DiorShow Mascara is one of the best out there, you know the waterproof version has some serious stay-put power.

While you're at it, prevent your cat eye from running down your face with a waterproof liner. We'll always and forever love Benefit's BADgal.

Save your face before it starts melting from the mist with a handy handkerchief. Just a light dab here and there where the rain caught you will do the trick. How cute is this Wings + Horns version?

The key to not looking like a wet dog on a rainy day is to use LESS hair product than you normally would so the humidity doesn't make your lovely locks look gloppy. A few spritzes of Living Proof Straight Making No Frizz Styling Spray will do the job by keeping your hair smooth and frizz-free. Throw it in your bag for touch-ups throughout the day.

There's nothing like a cute and colorful umbrella to shield you from the stormy clouds and give your aura a touch of sunshine. We love how ModCloth repped all of ROYGBIV with their Rays the Bar version.

For maximum hair and makeup protection, throw a hat on your head - it's both cute and practical. We're drooling over this shiny, woven plastic Rachel Comey Barrel Hat so much, we almost want it to start raining again. Almost.

Getting dressed with a painting in mind is a cool challenge. And it will ensure your color palette is artfully mastered. See how Picasso got interpreted sartorially here.

Start with a spring-weight full-sleeve fiery-red jacket.

Keep it in the family of colors that carried through Picasso's Rose Period.

Though it is hard to pull off, this tall bucket hat give the look a jaunty tilt.

With the principles of cubism at work, this ring ties in the hues and the angular repeat.

With a mary jane strap and open foot, the shoe appears to be seen from many angles at once, the art Picasso perfected.

Tie the look together with a silk scarf, if only for the precious white space.

Kill two birds with one stone with this method. Stretch pants will allow for slight expansion, as your turkey baby grows inside of you. Wild patterns will camouflage any food that lands astray as your tripping on tryptophan.

The name of the game is Slouch. Find something with a wide set body that tszujes at the sleeves. This way you're totally concealed from the bloat. Or from a baby for that matter. With these, I recommend a pair of leggings, so at least part of the body is slim.

Some extra fabrication will conceal any bloat you incur from the lavish spread before you. Pleats expand and contract without much notice.

This might look similar to the pleating concept, but I assure you, there's a difference. With this, we advise you find a skirt with an elastic band and gathers at the waist. It's not that you're going to get fat over one gigantic meal, but between the salt, the all-American butter and that the majority of your day will be dedicated to eating, you're going to want some wiggle room.

Just because you're at a classy affair doesn't mean you can't break out all your moves.

Two toned to perfection and ready for a night on the town.

Contrasting soles are what's hot in mens footwear. The heavyweight sole will keep you grounded so you don't go flying out of your kicks.

You can never go wrong with Loub red bottomed shoe. These add a little spice to your toes with bows and spikes.

A little print never hurt anybody. Wear these to bring out your wild side.

Thou wouldst to wear a muumuu, else nothing,

but work awaits ye, chic o thee must be.

Hark! Ensembles o’er here! Thrice beest thine!

And all that is made cometh from here,

the States that doth be United in

America. Except for all shoes.

Find thyself looking bright to work ere’day,

Support thee and thy country in this way.

***Sparknotes version: Three looks for work on a summer’s day. All made in the USA, shoes not withstanding. See it all here.

Photo: Lucky Magazine

1. Johanne Mills Mink Fur Earrings, £150- The semi permanent earmuff stays on when the coat comes off. These little mink dot earrings will tickle the lobes all day long.

2. L’Agence Shearling Pocketed Stole, $1,515- These pockets, though useful for an iPhone stow, are best made for hands. Keep them toasty in-pocket, and release the need for an iffy finger-tipped touch screen-friendly glove. Throw it over a coat in the great outdoors, and keep it on over the base layer once inside.

3. Dolce & Gabanna Three-Zip Lily Twist Satchel, $1,790- Who’d bother to lug a living pet around town when your tote can be just as cuddly, and a little less wily? D&G use calfskin and coyote fur to create man’s best gift.

4. Rachel Comey Fur Purse, $128-  Fur pom-pom as purse is a tactile pleasure. With just enough space for the essentials, it’ll swing soft and light against the body, like a light nuzzle.

5. Rick Owens Three Fox Rings Gloves, $853- Give the gift of fur-cuffed long-armed gloves. Keep your wrists bundled and the warmth will spread.

6. Pierre Hardy Fur Bootie, $1,937- A bootie with tufts of hair sticking out the middle? Surprisingly, yes please. Pony hair down the tongue of this bootie makes for an elegant stride.

7. SpiritHoods Wolf Hat, $128- Won’t kill for fashion? Camouflage an animal lover in this one-man-wolf-pack hat. It’s faux, so when she goes running with wolves, they won’t sniff her out as a furrier.

Along with the men’s footwear, we’ve got in some incredible new boots and shoes for the ladies. And if you’ve never heard of Portland’s Niki Dimitras then you’re going to love what you see next, click for the new arrivals!

We’ve got a wonderful little ankle-strap oxford in from Rachel Comey, with a small floral design embellished with metallic thread. Leather upper and leather sole. Also from Comey, an embossed leather boot with small snake skin print. These round toe, ankle height boots have a wood stacked, chunky 3-inch heel. 100% leather upper and rubber, grip sole.

And then we’re so excited to get in Portland, Oregon’s own Niki Dimitras who is the genius behind the brand Luxury Jones. They create an extremely eclectic mix of  deconstructed vintage and retro pieces that fit into today’s high fashion world. Each piece is completely one-of-a kind.

Click HERE to shop new women’s footwear.

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LINK LOVE: Selectism

Rachel Comey’s Fall 2010 collection was such a success to me that it’s caused me to go back and take a closer look at her wonderful past collections. The current Spring collection is amazing, and lucky for you, on sale at Stel’s Boston!

Shop these looks and more at Stel’s online or at their store on Newbury St.

After tracking diversity on the runways for several seasons, we took off last September because we thought the fashion industry was finally coming to its senses. Models of color were getting booked! How disappointing, then, to tally this season’s numbers.

As I watched the New York shows last week, I noticed that the casts were dominated by white models. An ethnic face might pass by here or there, alone in a lineup of 30-some looks — but the overall impression I got from my Z-row seat was that what's gonna big for fall is being a white person. (Also: fur.)

It turns out this impression wasn’t just anecdotally true: it’s a plain fact. The New York runways were less diverse this season than last time we checked in.

Fashion week had been becoming more diverse — it was only in the fall of 2007 that fully one-third of shows in New York had 100% white casts. Two years later, we calculated that 18% of spots in show lineups were booked by models of color — a real improvement in the representation of black, Latina, and Asian faces in the crucible where the beauty standard is forged.

This season, fashion took a step back.

We counted the number of spots in each of the 122 fall, 2010, shows held in New York that were covered by Style.com. (Why Style.com? Because the online home of American Vogue strikes a good balance of breadth and noteworthiness in choosing which shows to cover, and it’s good about putting models’ names in its slideshows.) We counted how many of those spots went to models of color.

The numbers, as you can see, were not encouraging. Of 4,095 turns on the runway, only 662 went to models who weren’t white. That’s barely 16%.

Black models, at 323 bookings, were used the most of any single ethnic group, aside from whites. Asians were second, with 264. Latinas were a distant third, with 61 trips down the catwalk. Fourteen times during this fashion week, models of other races were used in a runway show.

It's important to note that we were counting instances of a model being used in a show — not individual models. (A lot fewer than 4,095 models did the fashion week rounds.) Models who are popular with designers and casting directors were booked for multiple shows, and many shows send each model out in two or more looks from the collection. We counted not each model but each runway look — ie, the total number of opportunities for women of color to be included on American fashion's biggest platform, and in the fashion week that kicks off the world's ready-to-wear collections, which continue right now in London.

Most of the shows that took place used some models of color — just three designers, A Détacher, Alice + Olivia (full disclosure: an old client of mine), and Preen, chose exclusively white casts — but many used very few. Well over 60% of the shows, in fact, used casts that were 85% white, or more.

Nineteen shows used only one non-white model. Those designers included taste-makers like Calvin Klein, blockbuster commercial labels like Diesel, and the Olsens’ well-regarded line, The Row.

Eighteen designers booked just two models of color. That list included both Donna Karan and DKNY, Jill Stuart, Rag & Bone, and Nicole Miller.

One of the worst offenders was Max Azria. At his three high-profile New York fashion week shows, BCBG Max Azria, Max Azria, and Hervé Leger by Max Azria — each attended by virtually every important fashion editor, and worked by one of fashion's most exclusive casts — diversity was practically non-existent. BCBG had one black model, Shena Moulton, and one Asian, Shu Pei Qin, out of a 29-look lineup. Hervé Leger had only the same two girls of color, in a 32-look show. For his eponymous line, Azria showed 36 looks, and used just one model who wasn’t white: Shu Pei.

It must be said that some models of color worked a lot.

The Chinese model Liu Wen, pictured here on the top left in an editorial for Teen Vogue, walked in 22 of the shows that we looked at for the purposes of this post, and Shu Pei, seen on the bottom in a Benetton ad, and Tao Okamoto, seen here in a Dazed & Confused editorial, each walked in 21. Those are excellent showlists for a single fashion week, and these models will almost certainly continue their strong runs during the European collections. But why weren’t there more models of color overall? None of the fashion shows I went to was even as diverse as the crowd that assembled to watch them.

Fashion week’s top black model, by number of shows and presentations booked, was Rose Cordero, pictured above on the March, 2010, cover of Paris Vogue. (Cordero is the first black model to be granted a solo French Vogue cover since Liya Kebede, in 2002.) The 17-year-old Dominican national was in 16 shows. Second, with 15 New York shows under her belt, was Joan Smalls, a Puerto Rican, shown below Cordero. On the upper left is Texan R’el Dade, who nabbed third place in a tie, with 12 shows.

Black models Sedene Blake, right, and Moulton, left, tied Dade’s tally.

Because as we all know “Latina” is an ethnicity, not a “race” — and since race is, after all, a social construct — it would be pointless to pretend that the models we counted as “Latina” were a comprehensive group. Where a Latina model was black, like Cordero, or the Brazilian Gracie Carvalho, we counted her as black. Where a Latina model was white, like the Brazilian Raquel Zimmerman, or virtually every other famous Brazilian model you can name, we counted them as white. So the “Latina” category we made up for the purposes of this analysis was necessarily gerrymandered; in fact, the only Latinas we counted as “Latinas” are models of mixed race and/or of indigenous descent. We did this because we wanted these categories to reflect the diversity of New York fashion week at the most superficial, visual level: during a show, did the girl walking by appear to be other than white? On the short list of things that casting directors take into consideration when choosing (or rejecting) a model, what passport she bears or culture she represents — those are not present. The color of her skin — that is.

We certainly wish that Peruvian Juana Burga, top, who walked in 10 shows, Bruna Tenório, a Brazilian of indigenous descent, pictured bottom left in a Neiman Marcus catalog, who walked in 8, and Daiane Conterato, who was fashion week's third most popular Latina model, with four shows — and women like them — had been better represented at the collections in New York.

Tara Gill, left, a Canadian who is part Native American, and the Moroccan Hind Sahli, right, walked in four and five shows, respectively. Their combined efforts comprised the less than 1% of the total runway spots that went to girls of other races. Why doesn’t fashion have a bigger place for faces like these?

The importance of this issue can hardly be overstated. The United States is only around 75% white, and according to the Census Bureau’s most recent figures, New York City is only 44% white. And many of the least-diverse labels, like Calvin Klein, Diesel, and Donna Karan, are international brands. Wouldn’t they want their potential customers to recognize their own forms of beauty in their runway shows? The aesthetic standards set by the fashion industry affect all of our lives. Making a sample size that models don’t have to die of anorexia to get into seems to be a real head-scratcher for some designers, but validating the beauty of models who meet every one of the industry’s other restrictive standards, and also happen to be non-white, should be a no-brainer.

Certain shows were relatively very diverse. Tracy Reese and Sophie Théallet — who won last June's Council of Fashion Designers of America Award, and Michelle Obama's favor — both had majority-minority show casts, casts that reflected in some way the diversity of the city those designers call home. Diane von Furstenberg showed 16 of her 43 collection looks on models of color. Ports 1961 was as diverse as always, with five different Asian models, three black models, and Hind Sahli all walking in its Bryant Park show. Fully one in three of designer Rachel Comey's looks was presented on a model of color. Daniel Vosovic, a designer whose show we did not include in our tally only because Style.com didn't cover it, showed his collection on an all-Asian cast. Fellow Project Runway alumnus Christian Siriano opened and closed his show with a black model, Sessilee Lopez — and was one of only seven designers to choose to give a coveted opening or closing nod to a model of color. These designers, at least, are among those who see the value in a runway show that in some way tries to reflect the diversity of the wider world.

Maybe we should ask Max Azria — not to mention Francisco Costa — why he doesn't.

Jezebel interns Madeleine Desmond, Lucy Zhihui Zhu, and Noorain Khan contributed invaluable work to this statistical report.

LINK LOVE: Fewer Models Of Color Work New York’s Fashion Runways [Fashion Weak]

Find more photos like this on ENVY. THE FASHION NETWORK

LINK LOVE: Style

Every girl need a funky pair of ankle boots, so why not go for these funky yet functional Rachel Comey ankle boots!? Made entirely out of Nubuck leather, these booties are equipped with two classy buckles across the ankle as well as raised ankle support. Super cute for a girl who wants style without going too bizarre!

Get it at: La Garconne

Get it at: La Garconne

Check out the Contributor by Rachel Comey for Urban Outfitters here! 

Thanks Racked and Style Caster!

N.D.C. has flashed us a preview of their upcoming Fall 2009 footwear collection, and I am unfortunately a bit disappointed. In a world of Rachel Comey low profile sleek oxfords and Bess studded combat boots, these chunky lace ups and blue collar work boots aren’t cutting it for me. I have never understood the curled up toe for one, and the shoes are just a bit boring I guess. What do you think indies? Boring or no?

Gallery: N.D.C.: Fall 2009 Footwear Preview

via Selectism

Rachel Comey is back at it again for Fall 2009, producing another great collection that is different, yet tightly knit to her well established style. While the oxford has seemed to be her claim to fame, Comey has mixed up her designs to include a wider array of timeless pieces. Timeless has always been a major concept that Comey tries to create, but could this be emphasized a bit more because of the recession? Canvas has been upgraded to a more durable leather, and the rounder and wider shoe itself screams longevity. I do love the boots, the increased use of suede, and those blue velvet looking shoes are killer too.

Gallery: Rachel Comey: Fall 2009 Collection

Courtesy of: The Fashionisto

Shorts? Cardigan? Both! Came across this awesome little onesey dubbed the cardi-short (or the shortigan) and fell head over heels! I can definitely see this piece making it big in the spring and early next fall. I would dress this up by wearing textured tights, a pair of platform heels, some rocker jewelry and a leather jacket. For a more casual look, try knee-high socks and boots! But as much as I love Rachel Comey, I dare say I can find this item for much less than $436…

To purchase these cardi-shorts, check out Oak here! 

Thanks Popgloss!

Men's Style #10: Clear Sunglasses (Paul Smith $315)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Skip clear and definitely skip wayfarers. Go with something a bit cooler and more subtle for Fall. (Karen Walker $170 via Gargyle)

Men’s Style released their 16 essentials for Fall, well I have decided to put my two cents in and chose ten of their items that I think suck. Their options are too safe, too old man, and just plain old boring. Not only am I going to give you some damn good alternatives, I’ll tell you where to get them and save you some cash too. All the links to buy the items are at the bottom.

Men's Style #2: Hiking Boots (Rachel Comey $380)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Who goes hiking in New York City? Try these higher, yet comfortable boots for size. Tuck your pants into them, or wear your pants over top. It's called versatility people (H by Hudson $235 via Urban Outfitters)

Men's Style #12: Braided Belt (Bally $140)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Two is always better than one, so try this double buckled belt. I think I wore a braided belt in elementary school and hated it then. (All Saints $88 via All Saints)

Men's Style #1: Patch Pocket Suit (Steve Alan Cooper $800)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Lapels are all the rage when it comes to suits these days. Simple outline on a standard grey suit (CNC $829 via Revolve Clothing)

Men's Style #7: Knit Beanie (Meg Cohen $140)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Why spend so much on something so simple. Go cheap on an item like this, not only will know one know the difference, they won't care (American Apparel $16 via American Apparel)

Men's Style #8: The Cricket Sweater (Flippa K $225)

Fashion Indie Recommends: How old are you that you are wearing a sweater like that? Don't get old too fast go with this cool shawl collar sweater (Julian Red $210 via Oak)

Men's Style #15: Micro Print Shirts (Pringle of Scotland $550)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Go polka dots. They aren't micro, but they aren't a bold blatant pattern (Comme de Garcons x H&M $TBD via Nitrolicious)

Men's Style #4: The Camel Blazer (Brooks Brothers $2,100)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Double breasted jackets aren't doing it for me. Like a said, lapels people! Try a cool knot jacket! (Scotch and Soda $240 via Revolve Clothing)

Men's Style #16: The Long Pea Coat (Unis $795)

Fashion Indie Recommends: Go long and tie it off. Commit to the full trench coat and be sure to get one with a belt so it doesn't look too baggy (Filius $450 via Refinery 29).

Men's Style #13: The Bubble Vest (Gap $68)

Fashion Indie Recommends: So this may be a bit more expensive, but undoubtedly worth it. This cool drooping neck sweater allows wearers to rock a cool sweater, or pull it up and over your head into a hood (reference image below)(Unconditional $278 via Oak)

Pictures courtesy of:

Mens Style, Oak, Refinery 29, Revolve Clothing, American Apparel, All Saints, Nitrolicious, Urban Outfitters Garglye

Rachel Comey has released her new line of Spring 09 footwear, so guys.. take notice! Though the designer is often known for the clothing creations for women, the footwear for men is no less impressive. The collection features shoes with a wide color range, for a variety of interests, as well as housing a high comfort level. The shoes are casual and are clearly for daily wear, but that doesn’t mean they lack the dose of flair everyone searches for.

Thanks to Selectism for the pics!