You don’t have to actually go in to Barneys on Wilshire (or Madison and 60th in NY) – to check out the great designer goods marked to sixty percent off. You can do it on their website, www.Barneys.com. One of our favorite habits this time of year is to virtually shop the sales and earmark the pieces we love – and “consider” buying them. It’s easy to sit on the purchases when they’re online – but we wouldn’t sit TOO long, as these items are very good deals, and will be flying around the world into the arms of those who can make up their minds, if we don’t. But a girl likes to dream . . . Here are things we found at Barneys.com SALE section that we think are well worth investing it, and can be worn again and again:

• - Christian Louboutin pewter strappy flats with ankle straps, marked from a steep $695 to $279.00. Comfortable and chic flats are always useful – particularly if you’re going on a vacation where you will be walking a lot, later in the summer.
• - Costume National Ankle cuff sandals in nude. These go with everything, and their “little bit of a heel” makes them good for day or evening. They went from $550 to $219.
• - Rick Owens print dress. Of course, ANYTHING Rick Owens is worth owning, and the dresses are perennial, and this one’s great for packing. We hear Italy is CRAZY for Rick Owens, and that he’s the biggest selling designer in Europe now. And he’s not even European – although he lives in Paris. $1240 to $499 is a GREAT DEAL!
• - Gregory Parkinson print slip dress. This is your go anywhere in the hot weather dress – and in the fall, you can layer it with leather. $300 marked to $119. This is just too good not to own.
• - Alexander Wang white leather bag. All Alex Wang bags are hot, and white will look good with black this fall. And for $329 (from $820), you could buy it in white, wear it for a while, then dye it black!

We know that for fall 2010, it’s the return of guy look for girls: tailored jackets and trousers are the rage, and we’re going to see dresses going bye bye, at least till spring. Neiman Marcus’ Creative Director Ken Downing told us Neimans is really going to push the pantsuit for women look. Well, Rick Owens went in the other direction for his Paris menswear show this week: the girl look for guys. We had to blow these pictures up very big to make sure these models were NOT girls, in fact. What with one shoulder t shirts, tunics long enough to be dresses, and some of the male models having long hair and frail shoulders – they all had that skinny wasted look that’s so popular in England right now – it showed androgyny actually CAN work the other way around. The entire spring 2011 collection for men was in black and white, and would probably look just as good on a woman. Maybe even better.

In Thursday September 3′s New York Times Styles section, the major story on the cover is titled “Imitate That Zipper!” and it essentially declares – with many damning photos – that Owens – an L.A. designer who relocated to Paris several years ago – has a number of looks that design houses Grai (L.A. based), Roland Mouret, Haider Ackerman, Charlotte Ronson, Rag & Bone, Maria Cornejo, Helmut Lang, Ohne Titel, and even Alexander Wang have knocked off versions of either Owens’ classic distressed zipper biker jacket and his cut-out silhouette dress – and even of his signature boiled wool and jersey long skirts and droopy t-shirts. The singular jacket photo here is Owens’ classic look. The other two photos are of jackets by Grai (left) and Roland Mouret(right). The designer of Grai used to work for Owens, but her entire collection could be confused for his. Owens takes it all in stride – not surprisingly – and says all these imitators mean its time for him to step up his game! But it says a lot for L.A. fashion because this was the place that that biker/Goth/urban slouch look was born – outside of Antwerp, Belgium, where it also had origins. In fact, that’s where Haider Ackerman is from – and his last few collections have been heavily Rick Owens. Ackerman’s even mentioned as a possible successor to Martin Margiela is her retires – which he says he’s not.
Check out the entire Rick Owens collection

And if you are looking for REAL Rick Owens leather jackets for less than the one here (about 2790.00), check out Decades II – they have them for about $800.

This Sunday, June 28, it will be held again (it’s about four times a year, and hotly anticipated), from 11 a.m. to 4pm at 6019 Simpson Avenue in North Hollywood, 91606.
Have we ever needed the A List Sample Sale more? Caroline Bray’s traveling morass of designer pre-worn clothes (from very chic local ladies) – Rick Owens, Chanel, Dolce, Commes des Garcons, etc. – plus overstock from great stores – has about the best deals on designers duds for women – skirts, dresses, cashmere, bags, pants, jackets, leather –  you can find these days. It is the PERFECT recessionista stop off.

Caroline takes cash, MC and Visa, no checks, and please don’t arrive early (as much as you might want to). You can call 323 841 3000. If you’ve been dying to buy SOMETHING, but feeling too guilty, this is a great place to look around – Caroline will bargain with you, and the pieces are really great. Nobody leaves empty-handed! – Merle Ginsberg

We miss Rick Owens and Michelle Lamy here in L.A. The designing couple, who also ran Les Deux Café in the late nineties, moved to Paris in 2004, after he’d first shown his collection in New York in 2001, on the direction of Vogue’s Anna Wintour. The Vogue editor in chief put Owens and his goth jerseys and cottons and shaped distressed leather jackets on the fashion map by running countless stories and photos about him.
Owens opened his first eponymous store on NY’s Lower West Side this year, and now comes London – Rick Owens, 64 South Audley Street, London W1, 020 7493 7145. They’re in the heart of the Mayfair “yuppie” district, which is highly amusing, and Owens used a copy of his own head on a column as store décor – how goth is that? You can read the whole story by Sarah Mower in London’s The Observer – it’s highly amusing.
Owens is absolutely bringing LA casual couture all over the world – and even though he doesn’t live here anymore and is a citizen of the world, he’s still managed to make LA a fashion capital on its own.

I’m often wearing a black tuxedo-style Viktor and Rolf jacket lately, that can be wrapped, belted, left loose – it’s so chic – and I always get stopped to ask where I got it. It’s obviously a $2,000.00 jacket or more – I got it for $300.00 bucks! At the A-List Sample Sale – same place I got the Rick Owens skirts I’m wearing right now, for a $150.00 (originally $600.00). Caroline Bray does about four sales a years – they are packed with clothing by Chanel, Rick Owens, Viktor and Rolf, and it just goes on and on – I got a Dolce blouse at the last one. The sales tend to be set up in private driveways at residences, and they have fabulous prices – much better than the prices in Decades II or any other resale store. The next one is April 19th, Sunday – and it’s a little far, in North Hollywood, at 6019 Simpson Avenue, 91606, from 11AM to 4PM. They don’t take checks, and it’s all worth it, you can get so many great classic pieces – plus shoes and bags. You can call (323) 841 3000 for more info, but mark your calendars – I have. – Merle Ginsberg

If you’re at all a part of the fashion scene in Los Angeles, you don’t want to miss the L.A. fashion week MOCA benefit on Thursday night. We’ve seen some quite good clothes down at the BoxEight shows – particularly at GenArt, which showed Raquel Allegra’s ripped dresses strewn over thin leather pants and slips (gorgeous!), GRAI’s gothy long dresses and leather jackets (very Rick Owens meets Yohji), and Society for Rational Dress’s short draped shiney dresses with leather jackets (are you getting a leather feeling here?). But now we’re ready to see some celebs. The MOCA benefit will present a fashion show filled with vintage gowns from Decades, and styling by Petra Flannery, and the hosts are Cameron Silver and Rachel Griffiths. Also on board – don’t tell anyone – are Marisa Tomei, Angie Harmon, Kelly Lynch, Zoe Saldana, Lisa Rinna and more. Some of the celebs are apparently going to walk in the show, as well. And L.A.’s own Louis Verdad will be showing clothes – we’re not sure if it’s a full collection, or what, but it will be interesting. All proceeds go to MOCA, and you can purchase tickets on downtownlafashionweek.com, but do it fast – they run from $50.00 to standing cocktail area to $200.00 for a VIP front row seat. MOCA is at 152 North Central Avenue, LA 90013, and it starts at 7PM.

IMG and Smashbox are out of the game, as of last season. But BOXEight has stepped up to the plate, and L.A. Fashion Week for fall 09 will kick off on Friday March 13th (can we really handle TWO Friday the 13th in one month?) with the semi-annual Gen Art show of young talent.

BOXEight is a collaborative arts organization dedicated to rejuvenating downtown L.A. Their 12,000 foot gallery studio at 615 S. Broadway will serve as the home for three days of shows, and seeing the theater alone is worth showing up for – it’s one of the great old movie palaces from the historic movie theater district, and opened in January of 1931. It’s pretty spectacular – and you can feel the ghost of Charlie Chaplin there.

 The GenArt show, which will no doubt be the best and most important one, will feature the clothes of GRAI (designed by Maya Yogev, who went to Otis, then worked for Rick Owens in Paris, and whom now sells at Kirna Zabete in NYC), Society for Rational Dress (designed by Corinne Grassini since 2004, and is cute and affordable), and one of Fashion Rule’s fave L.A. designers, Raquel Allegra – whose ripped, distressed and fringed cottons continue to amaze. That will be Friday March 13 from 7 to 10, with an after party  to 2 am. All three of these design houses is fully functional, and not some junior jeans line financed by somebody’s rich father.

The next two days of shows on Saturday and Sunday will be listed on http://www.boxeight.com/fashionweek/spring09.html as they are inked in – but so far, martinMartin, Mike Vensel, Hayley Starr, FutureHeretics, David Alexander and a few more names are confirmed.

All we know is – it’s GOT to be better than going to those awful Culver City tents. The historic district of L.A. is at least a better visual, with some interesting history. And the clothes – we can’t promise anything, you’ll just have to check it out. And hey – Coachella isn’t till April 17th, so you’re not missing anything. 

Three Dots is the great groovy L.A. based t shirt line that we all know, love and wear all the time, founded by Sharon Lebon. Pegah Anvarian is the L.A. based designer best known for her luxe leather jackets, cool jersey dresses, and L.A. meets Europe and N.Y. aesthetic. Her clothes have been sold at Des Kohan on S. Cloverdare for years, and she counts Charlize Theron, Jennifer Lopez and Nicole Richie among her celeb fans.

               Now Pegah Anvarian has been named the Creative Director of Three Dots, which is very exciting news for the label, and for all of us. Her first Three Dots collection will debut at Coterie in New York next week, for fall 09. It will highlight her talent for draping, and her love of mixing hard and soft fabrics together. So expect the fall Three Dots line to be a cross between t-shirt dressing and a little Rick Owens, Balmain and Ann Demeulemeester.

                 A sneak peak at Three Dots fall introduces a sheer jersey, that’s being specially knit for the line. Pieces out of this fabric can be layered to create new shades. There are also jackets made out of tweed knit, and high waisted pants. 

                  Pegah’s got a great eye – but so does her husband, fashion photographer Andrew Macpherson, who’s worked with Galliano, Thierry Mugler and Alaia, and they actually shot the fall Three Dots lookbook together last weekend. – Merle Ginsberg