Category Archives: Fashion

Lo & Sons OMG Bag Review

Lo & Sons bags are a little on the pricey side, but boy are they nice. Luxury at its finest! Their two bags the OMG and OG are very similar in size, the OG being 17” x 6.5” x 15” (43.2cm x 16.5cm x 38.1cm) while the OMG is 16” x 6” x 13.5” (40.6cm x 15.2cm x 34.3cm).

Considering that more and more airlines are enforcing regulations for the personal item you carry in addition to your carry-on, which limit travelers to approximately 17″ x 9″ x 10″ (43cm x 22cm x 25cm), I chose the OMG so that I could squeeze this bag by as a personal item since it is a bit smaller in depth and height than the OG.

Last weekend I decided to bring the OMG on its own to Porto as my weekend bag. So what can it fit?Clothes: jeans, two long sleeved shirts, two pairs of socks, two pairs of undies

Electronics: iPad, Kindle, Bose headphones, iPad/iPhone charger, dSLR and 24-105 lens and filter

Toiletries: Makeup, skincare, toothbrush, hair products, etc.

Gluten free snacks and water bottle

Accessories: Glasses and case, sunglasses and case, wallet, gum, tissues, earplugs, Swiss army knife, lipgloss

It was a fair amount of stuff with all the electronics and snacks, but I still had room during the trip to stowaway my scarf, pullover and jacket at times when it was hot.On the way there we had emergency exit seats, so I was not allowed to keep the bag under the seat, but here it is on our way back. I have fit this bag into a very small Canadair CL-65 aircraft on the way from Columbus to Philadelphia as well. You do have to turn the bag on its side to fit it under, but in the Swiss aircraft below, I still had room to put my feet stretched under the seat as well if I wanted.

On the smaller American aircraft, it was tighter, but it fit as well on an aircraft where most people are forced to check their carry-on and almost only jackets or very thin bags fit in the overhead bin. I was happy to see the bag fit on both kinds of planes and not be questioned for size at all.Moreover, I am also really happy with all the pockets in this bag. It makes organization a breeze (there is even a shoe storage pocket!) and I feel more secure storing my wallet in the inner pockets on city trips with the additional inner zipper pockets.

A bit of a splurge, but I highly recommend the Lo & Sons bags. If you are looking for the perfect personal item to complement your carry-on for longer trips, this is it!

Graziella Going Out of Business

Uh oh… look what bag is making a return:

Danger, danger! This bag first made an appearance  in my house when a friend convinced me to spend 420CHF on my wedding shoes.

Yeah… didn’t think I was ever going to be bringing another one of these bags home with prices like that, especially after I noticed in the summer that the shop had gone bankrupt!

But this afternoon Kay sent me this ad he saw in the newspaper:

I may not be fluent in German, but I immediately knew what this meant: LIQUIDATION SALE! W00t.

I headed over to Graziella straight after work to catch the sale before it ended at 18:30. The shop was busier than I had ever seen it when it was in business (duh) but most of the women there were pretty old. I mean, this shop sells shoes that are 200-900CHF. What do you expect? It’s not H&M.

There weren’t any signs posted saying what the actual liquidation discounts were, so at first I began walking around the store just to see if there was anything I even liked (in my size) that I wanted to inquire about. I was mainly looking for my beloved Fernando Pensato shoes because they are so comfortable and unique!

I was looking for either some funky colourful shoes like I tried on last year when I was looking for my wedding ones or the white or black version of my wedding shoes to use for dress shoes. I think the ones above are originally 380CHF and the ones below are around 420CHF like my wedding shoes.

 

I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for as lots of the Pensato shoes were already gone or not in stock and I was noticing that most of the prices still were crazy high on the boxes… like 380CHF, 500CHF, etc. I was thinking I might not get anything when a little old lady came up to me and told me everything was 40%.

I had to ask her to make sure I really understand… she meant 60% off, as in you pay 40% for any item.

YOU GUYS. That is like the best sale I have EVER seen in Zürich ever! Sales are practically nonexistent here!!! After that… I started re-looking at everything and became fairly certain I wanted to buy one pair of shoes. I searched all over the store and had three contenders. One was a black pair that would actually be useful on a daily basis, but they were almost 800CHF… and 40% of 800CHF is still a hell of a lot of money for shoes. No thanks.

The second pair (that I almost got) were fairly high but still pretty comfy from what I could tell, and they had these badass gold pineapples for heels. I should have taken a picture. I’m sorry I didn’t. But they were 500CHF and I wasn’t sure about the height, so I went with these ones in the same style as my wedding shoes because they were only 150CHF on sale! 150CHF is a heck of a lot better than what I paid for my wedding shoes, don’t you think??

This was the only style of Pensato that they had that I was really searching for and I was a bit unsure about the color at first. They are extremely girly.

I don’t usually go for pastels, but I happened to be wearing a pastel multicoloured blouse and I thought “Why the hell not, they match my shirt perfectly!” I may not be able to wear them with my entire dark, muted wardrobe… but I will be able to wear them from time to time when I don white or pastels!

Also… how am I supposed to amass a larger collection of Pensato shoes if I don’t take advantage of 40% off sales??

I really love all the lace and trim and crafty feminine features on these shoes. I can’t wait to wear them to the office tomorrow!

They had many other Pensato shoes at the store but I’ve figured out that basically anything besides their pumps suck. (oh the irony…) But really, their wedges are pretty nasty with some crappy soles, the flats are in my opinion VERY old fashioned and matronly, their closed-toe heels are very uncomfortable and stiff, and all the low heels look pretty “blah” and don’t do anything for large feet.

They hit it right with their sling pumps though! And they are such a comfy heel. They support me in all the right spots.

Do you have a shoe brand you would splurge for unexpectedly?