[ bento ] luxe essentials

Feb 20

Bento at LMFF

We’re pretty excited to announce that Bento is participating in not one, not two, but THREE events during the upcoming L’Oreal Melbourne Fashion Festival. This is a pretty big step from last year when you may remember we attended, but didn’t show.

Anyway… the first one to tell you about is the Midmouse catwalk show on Friday the 9th of March. There are two shows and a huge after party. The first show kicks off at 7.30pm. Tickets are just $15 a pop and you’ll get to see lots of other emerging labels as well as Bento.

The Bento team will be there in full and it’d be fantastic to have your support and perhaps get to meet some of you on the night.

You can find out more and purchase tickets here: penthousemouse.com/events/aw12/midmouse-runway.

Stay tuned, because there are more events to tell you about very soon (and the others are free!).

Feb 2

2 Comments

Brown Paper Packages Tied Up With String

These are a few of our favourite things right now…

Read & Write

The Design Files – So. Much. Gorgeous.
Business Chic – Wearing our Ruby dress every week for a whole year… more inspiration than you ever thought possible!
Love Local Fashion - Fashion reporter Aleisha McCormack is wearing Australian fashion on air for a whole year (including Bento, of course!).

See & Do

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (aka “The Blue House”) – Georgetown, Penang (below).

Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion

Take photos of yourself looking like a ghost at aforementioned mansion…

Celebrate Chinese New Year - in a country for which it represents a major event on the calendar.

Chinese New Year in Georgetown, Penang

Kedai Kasut (shoe shop) – Visit the store where Jimmy Choo himself started his apprenticeship (incidentally, diagonally across the road from the blue house above).

Where it all began for Jimmy Choo

(Pictures courtesy of Derek Chang.)

Wear & Carry

Paris House – Somewhat ironically, a NZ label… but so much fun! And ohhhhh, that leather.

Easy Come, Easy Go

Eat & Drink

Capi – The ULTIMATE mixers (or even for naked consumption), these tasty morsels are even made in Australia. We LOVE their ginger beer.

Ginger beer, complete with chunks of ginger. So good.

Twenty and Six Espresso – just too good to keep a secret any longer. The new kid on the brunch block.

Jan 24

How Important Is It, Really?

Team Bento is currently on our annual sabatical, this time taken in Georgetown, Penang. Of course, I couldn’t visit another country without engaging in a little of one of my favourite hobbies, window shopping.

Something rather curious that I’ve spotted here is that it doesn’t seem to be essential to provide information about either fabric or country of manufacture of the garments being sold. I’ve been trying to rationalise this in my mind, but for me these make up such a very large part of my measure of value.

Here it seems quite acceptable for garments to be sold with literally no tags except the one showing the brand. At first I thought it was perhaps just at markets – items that were handmade by emerging designers and thus more difficult to police – but on closer inspection in a department store I discovered that this is actually a widespread phenomenon.

In Australia of course, it’s compulsory (and legally enforced) that we show not only the fabric used but also the country of manufacture and care instructions too. There are even guidelines for how long the tag should remain readable.

So… how important is this information to you? Do you ever look at the care tag, fabric tag or country of manufacture before purchasing an item? Does it factor into your decision making?

Jan 16

5 Comments

Gosh

Something rather curious happened last week, and in the spirit of transparency, I want to tell you about it.

In about October last year, I did an interview for a major glossy magazine. The journalist asked me to put together a list of ways you could incorporate sustainable / eco-chic dressing into your life, matching each list ‘item’ with a product. I did just that, writing a very thorough list, providing facts and figures, interesting little tales and referencing not only Bento products, but a large number of other products that I use myself and really love.

I’m thorough about this sort of thing and the journalist was thrilled at the level of detail I’d provided (I figure it’s always better to have too much and to cut it back than too little and have to pad it out).

I didn’t hear any more about the article and figured that like so many of these things, it had be scrapped or put on the backburner.

So you can imagine my astonishment when I was sitting in my beautician’s waiting room last week and flicked open the magazine in question only to discover they’d taken what was effectively an article I’d written, stripped out every mention of me and of Bento but kept reference to all the other products.

Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps they think I’m a nobody and never will be so it’s okay. Perhaps they imagine I’ll never advertise with them so no harm is done to their bottom line. Whatever the reason, it wasn’t cool… and it wasn’t a nice way to find out.

Jan 11

What a Milestone!

Organic Cotton Louis V knits

This week, we cracked the four-digit milestone for Facebook fans.

To celebrate, we’re offering a variety of very special offers.

The first is that all our knits are just $120 (and come with free shipping within Australia). Use code ‘FBKNITS’ to buy (shop.thisisbento.com). That’s WHOLESALE price, people.

We have both warm and cool weather options. The winter versions are 100% merino wool. Their summer counterparts are 100% featherweight organic cotton.

If you want to know about the other discounts, make sure you join the party on Facebook by liking our page – www.fb.com/thisisbento

Jan 9

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The Ruby Dress Challenge

We were absolutely thrilled to learn today that Bento friend, fan, customer and devotee Cheryl Lin of Business Chic has set herself a very Bento-esque challenge: to wear our Ruby dress in black to work, every week for an entire year. You can read more about the project and follow her progress here: http://businesschic.com.au/2012/01/the-businesschic-black-dress-project/.

We thought we’d show our support and kick things off by giving her a few styling ideas to try. So here goes…

For a super serious board meeting:

White Shirt by Jil Sander at Netaporter

We know you’re not a fan of collars, Cheryl… but with the neckline on the dress it will stay in place so nicely!

To have a play with texture, we suggest pairing it with a thick belt that has some interesting detail. Patent would work well too.

Wide leather belt by Bottega Venetta at Netaporter

To make it all about your legs:

Wolford at Netaporter

Get a big snuggly when it gets cooler…

Cashmere knit by Gucci at Netaporter

Channel biker-chic:

Leather jacket by Dolce & Gabbana at Netaporter

And on casual Friday…

Boots by J.Crew

Bento denim jacket

Good luck, Cheryl! We can’t wait to see what ideas you come up with.

Jan 5

2 Comments

You’re Giving Us A Bad Name…

One of my favourite things to do is window shop – particularly at sale time. Not in the traditional sense of the idea, but with a fashion industry hat on.

I love looking at what didn’t sell and thinking about why. Estimating cost price for garments and determining whether the retail price is even vaguely reasonable.

In my latest round of window shopping at Myer and David Jones (department stores are best for this kind of outing) I was absolutely shocked and – let’s face it – appalled at the calibre of garments being passed off as “high end designer”. It’s not my business, interest or intent to bad mouth other labels, so I’m not going to name and shame anyone here. What I will say is that when I’m evaluating a garment this is what I look for:

Longevity of style – is it very very seasonal? Is there anything about it that can be reused in the future, or has been reused from previous collections in terms of cut?
Origin of manufacture - I don’t have any major issues with offshore production if it’s certified fair trade (beyond the whole ‘supporting your local economy’ argument), but it’s a very clear fact that the cost of production in significantly reduced when it’s done in developing countries (Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, China, India, Pakistan, even Romania etc.). There’s no arguing this. Additionally, production in these countries means substantially higher ‘minimum’ orders are required, so the cost per garment is lower again. Before I started Bento I once got costings to manufacture t-shirts in Mexico. They were $3 apiece, INCLUDING fabric!
Materials used - many people believe if something is (for example) 100% silk, then it can reasonably be compared to all other fabric that is 100% silk. The fact is silk, like cotton, wool, cashmere, linen, and every other fibre comes in varying degrees of quality. In the case of silk, it can be treated in many different ways and these different treatments change the price point. Many fabrics not only come in different qualities, they also come in different weights. So that ’tissue tee’ you got sold on for being ‘soft, lightweight, breathable, etc.’ is actually just cheaper than its heavier counterpart.

Given all this, I was pretty horrified by a diffusion label tee I found in a department store that was $80 reduced from $249 which was made in China from a Cotton/Polyester blend fabric. It did have a rather gorgeous print on it though.

During my excursion, these were the labels that really stood out for me as being worth the cash:

Jayson Brundson
Ellery
Dries Van Noten
Ginger & Smart
Chloe (main line)

Importantly though this outing drove home for me the fact that we probably don’t charge even nearly enough for Bento items, and that if all those other labels can achieve such success charging completely outrageous prices then I’m sure we can do very well too.

How do you decide whether something is ‘worth it’?

Jan 3

Style Synonyms – A Peachy Cool Combo

Ugh… somehow the heat always makes the concept of ‘chic’ seem like an impossible ask. This week’s Style Synonyms look is pretty perfect for a day spent in and out of air-conditioned buildings when the temperature extremes mean layers are your best friend.

How do you stay stylishly cool when the weather heats up?