built by wendy

The crisp, slightly preppy basics on the Built by Wendy online sample sale are screaming for your Spring closet. True to its sample sale name, the prices are cheap for Built by Wendy's signature tailoring and cute details. Warm weather uniform: we love these Military Shorts ($35, originally $117), paired with a Little Yellow Camisole ($32, originally $108). Visit Built by Wendy to check out the sample sale for yourself, which ends Monday, April 11, so no dillydallying.

• CK One lifestyle — Vogue UK
• Best bet: Manimal's suede applique bootie — The Cut
• Gossip Girl: our favorite season four fashions — Stylelist
• Trust us, this Summer you'll want to wear: long floral dresses — Lucky
• Claudia Schiffer sets her sights on design — Modelinia
• Donatella Versace says she could "for sure" see Christopher Kane designing for Versace — Fashionologie
• Fashion Week handbags: Bottega Veneta Spring 2011 — Purse Blog
• Sweet escape: Built by Wendy's Spring '11 collection — Refinery29
• Claudia Schiffer at Ferragamo — Red Carpet Fashion Awards
• A colorful collaboration: Bulgari and Matthew Williamson — Vogue Daily

• Lookbook: Built by Wendy — Nylon
• The chic cover-up! — Grazia Daily
• Confessions of Vogue's shopaholics — Times UK
• PETA grounded — Page Six
• Designer finds on eBay — Frugal-Fashionista
• Bloggers and celebs at BCBG Max Azria — Red Carpet Fashion Awards
• Interns looking for a leg up in the fashion industry — New York Times
• Fashion's Night Out in London — Vogue UK
• Penney's adds own contemporary line — WWD
• Fab cover: Sienna Miller for Vogue — Fab UK
• Fly pick: Robert Rodriguez's black sequin tunic — Flypaper

We don't know what y'all are up to this afternoon but we're wholly distracted and experiencing something of a mid-week slump right here at five on the dot. Thankfully, our Network gives us the opportunity to both finish work and maintain our mental wanderings! The television program Stylista seems to have aired and Fashion Addict Diary has a clip of Creative Director Joe Zee giving some friendly style advice. J'adore Couture posted a picture of Marc Jacobs wearing the hottest trend off the Spring 09 runway and FashionFillers gives a shout out to some ankle boots that are a New Yorker's dream come true come rainstorm. Finally, and most substantially, Style...A Work In Progress talks about a personal denim crusade and the Built By Wendy pair that fits the bill. At least someone's getting something done around here! 

Our obsession with talking to people about Built by Wendy has become pathological. It's not the brand, specifically, it's more the conceptual vantage point we've been mulling over. It started a few weekends back when, on our way to Opening Ceremony, we stopped in the store, to which we had never been. We perused the racks, it was more expensive than we remembered. Three hundred dollars for a cotton bomber or a cotton poplin dress? Curious. Well, we can say for sure that what you have there is a firmly placed contemporary price point but what makes the defining tricky is when you look at the clothing quality and the basic premise on which the company was first built. Built by Wendy always cost just a little bit less than contemporary which was its essential draw. The point was "Hey check out these clothes that look kind of like they're from A.P.C. but cost a little bit less. They look homespun which means, if you really wanted to, you could make them yourself." Now, really, Built by Wendy is not able to put 'cost effective' on its resume. So, can the clothing hold its own? Well, sure. It's just not very much fun is all. We don't blame anyone, we know it's hard to make money as a designer and finance a business in this economy, we just miss the old days when it felt like Wendy was building those frocks so that we didn't have to spend three hundred dollars on them.