Our New Favorite Eco-Friendly Products

The historic Town Tire Co. building, now home to Rolling Greens Hollywood, was originally designed as an open-air market.

The second-anniversary party for the green lifestyle website EcoStiletto.com was held at the Rolling Greens Hollywood nursery, and the women in attendance were as pretty as flowers themselves, attired in brightly colored skin-skimming summer dresses. (We missed the wardrobe memo and showed up in black ourselves.) We were all toting an extra handbag to donate to the new Los Angeles branch of Dress for Success, the terrific nonprofit organization that provides interview-appropriate clothing and accessories for low-income women seeking to enter the workforce. In exchange we got a recycled bag to fill with the latest green swag.

Here’s some of what we collected:

1. Tom’s of Maine’s new Wicked Fresh mouthwash and toothpaste, which promises to “neutralize stinky volatile sulphur compounds” with a combination of licorice-root extract and aromatic oils like mint. We like the frank language and we like that the packaging is made with recycled paperboard and soy ink.

2. A Waterpik EcoFlow shower head that saves up to 1 gallon of water a minute, with five settings and a pause control to use when you’re shaving your legs or letting that deep-conditioning mask sink into your hair. How important is a water-conserving shower head? Consider that, according to the EPA, showering accounts for 17 percent of residential water consumption in the United States — more than 1.2 trillion gallons of water each year.

3. A six-piece box of Nicobella Vegan Organic Dark Chocolate Truffles, in flavors like pumpkin chai, sunflower banana butter and ginger green tea. Created by nutritionist Nichole Dandrea, the truffles include good-for-you ingredients like sunflower- and pumpkin-seed butter, organic oat milk and blueberry nectar. A mere 40–61 calories each, the confections are, most important, absolutely delicious.

4. Green Works bathroom cleaner. Maybe not the most glamorous product we’ve ever gotten in a gift bag, but this “99% naturally derived” cleaner from a major brand — Clorox — really does have cred. It was recently certified by the nonprofit Natural Products Association, which requires that products be made up of at least 95 percent natural ingredients from renewable or plentiful sources (with artificial ingredients allowed only when viable natural ingredients are unavailable) and packaging must contain a majority of biodegradable and post-consumer recycled content.

5. Jane Iredale’s creamy blush stick in Chemistry. A beautiful long-lasting rosy brown, the blush is made with cocoa powder, so it gives off an unmistakable whiff of chocolate and makes you feel like a 4-year-old with the remnants of a chocolate-chip cookie all over her cheeks.

What we didn’t leave with, but we’re hoping to win when the results of a raffle are revealed in October, is the $4,000 Sustainable Edge Bed from Environment Furniture. Made of gorgeous reclaimed Brazilian peroba rosa wood, the bed floats on a wide platform that includes end tables and four sliding drawers. We’ve been dreaming of the bed while eating those luscious vegan truffles, but since we’re in a planet-friendly, love-thy-reader kind of mood, we’re sharing the information here on how to enter the EcoStiletto sweepstakes yourself.

What’s your favorite green find?

Photo credit: Amy Graves for EcoStiletto.com

US retailers track the nation, Hermès’ Shang Xia, Mobile commerce trends, Twitter fails to click, Japan-India exchange

J.Crew Summer 2010 | Source: J Crew

Fashion Nation: What Retailers Know About Us (WSJ)

“By tracking customers’ spending habits, retailers get a bird’s-eye view of tastes as they ebb and flow. Online retailers, in particular, see every click we make. They know which brands we’ve peeked at, how long we pondered, and what we actually purchased.”

5 Things We Know About Hèrmes’ New China Brand, Shang Xia (Jing Daily)

“Everything from the design to the materials, manufacture, marketing and management will be local… It is a Chinese brand, developed in China with the Chinese team, based on Chinese craftsmanship and broadly made in China.”

Top 5 Mobile Commerce Trends for 2010 (Mashable)

“Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is simply the ability to conduct business transactions through a mobile device. With smartphone sales rising 49% in the first quarter of 2010, never before has it been so easy to shop, anywhere, anytime from the palm of your hand.”

Twitter Fails to Click with Brand Marketers (Brand Channel)

“Twitter, which feels like it’s been around for eons but is only four years old, boasts more than 100 million registered users and 65 million tweets daily… despite its growth and all the buzz, it’s not yet clicking with brand marketers.”

Japanese Designers Head to India (WWD)

“Earlier this month, the designers behind three Tokyo-based labels- Matohu, Somarta and Motonari Ono- traveled to the country on a research trip. The five designers will be returning to India for the inaugural edition of India International Jewellery Week.

Fashion Pioneers | Natalie Massenet Says to Create the Future, Follow the Consumer

LONDON, United Kingdom — Over the last several months, all eyes have been on the world’s leading luxury fashion etailer: Net-a-Porter. And for good reason.

In March, the business was acquired by Swiss luxury group Richemont at a total valuation of £350 million. In June, the company revealed the upcoming launch of Mr. Porter, a dedicated luxury menswear offering. And just a few weeks ago, Net-a-Porter, which was launched during the first internet boom, celebrated ten years in business.

At this pivotal moment in the company’s history, BoF editor-in-chief Imran Amed sat down with founder and chairman Natalie Massenet for the second installment of Fashion Pioneers, a series of intimate live conversations between Mr. Amed and the fashion industry’s most interesting operators, brought to you by The Business of Fashion.

Held at Net-a-Porter’s cavernous new headquarters on the top floor of London’s Westfield shopping centre, attended by key industry figures like Sarah Mower, Jonathan Saunders and Gareth Pugh, and streamed live to a global audience online, the evening was full of exciting revelations — including the world debut of Net-a-Porter’s new iPad application, which was specially expedited through Apple’s approval process just in time for the event — and was threaded together by a consistent and powerful theme: in today’s fast-evolving world, the path to meaningful innovation begins with the consumer. (RSS and email subscribers, please see the video of edited highlights here.)

But it’s important to remember that behind the tremendous success story of Net-a-Porter lies a personal story of entrepreneurship rooted in confidence and optimism. Indeed, Ms. Massenet opened the conversation with a reference to a book she read before starting Net-a-Porter. Titled Creative Visualization, the volume focuses on using the power of the imagination to realise goals.

On her own visualisation, Ms. Massenet, a former editor at WWD and Tatler, said: “Rather than imagining Net-a-Porter, I imagined that I would be involved in a media business. It was a big white space, with lots of light and lots of young people walking around, working, smiling.” But while Net-a-Porter is most often described as a luxury etailer, what Natalie Massenet has created could equally be described as a new kind of media business: a luxury fashion magazine that’s shopable. “I definitely think of myself as an editor,” said Ms. Massenet. “I think that a successful retailer thinks like an editor, certainly today when you can use the internet to shop, literally, off a page.”

But today, with the explosive growth of fashion blogging and social shopping platforms like Polyvore and ShopStyle, end consumers can become editors, stylists and a merchandisers themselves, creating looks for others to see and shop. Pressed on how the social media revolution has impacted Net-a-Porter, Ms. Massenet was unequivocal: “It drives our business.”

“There is a great egalitarianism going on online,” she continued. But Massenet clearly understands that in luxury fashion, selective socialising is the name of the game. Net-a-Porter currently operates an “invitation-only” affiliate program and works with around 430 bloggers and websites around the world who have been “hand-picked because they are relevant in the fashion industry,” she said. “We like the way they look, the way they talk, their professionalism. They drive traffic and they drive sales.”

Social media can also drive consumer insights and intelligence, said Ms. Massenet, relating the story of her accidental announcement of Net-a-Porter’s plans to launch The Outnet, a discount sales site, at a bloggers’ lunch a year ago. “The fact that we announced to the bloggers that we were going to create The Outnet created all this feedback that started coming in on the internet about what their expectations were about the new brand — and we listened,” she explained. “We actually used the feedback that was coming from our future consumers and future partners and built it into our own strategy.”

But the world of digital luxury is still a largely undefined territory. “I’m not sure that any of the rules have been written yet. There’s still room for people to improvise,” she emphasised. However, there may be a limit on how much luxury innovators can learn from other digital businesses. “I think it would have been very dangerous for us when we started Net-a-Porter to have looked at the online world, which was at that time Yahoo and Amazon, and said okay that’s the way we need to build a fashion business, because then it would have been full of blue underlines and lists and completely uninspiring visually,” she said.

Since the recent Richemont acquisition, industry observers have been watching for signs on how the transaction would impact the way Net-a-Porter operates. Specifically, there has been speculation on whether the Richemont deal might impact the site’s product mix. On this point Ms. Massenet was clear: “The message that I have shared with Johann Rupert, the owner of Richemont, is that Net-a-Porter has to remain independent,” she said. “The buying team buy what they like. We work very closely with the Gucci Group, with LVMH, with the Prada group. We are entirely independent.”

Turning to the future launch of Mr. Porter, the dedicated luxury menswear site tentatively due to launch in January 2011, Ms. Massenet emphasised that their strategy was based first and foremost on understanding the needs and wants of the consumer: “The women’s business is driven by trends and newness,” she said. “We believe what men really like is to look great — great style.”

“The service is going to be different, the brand is going to be different, the packaging is going to be different, the voice, the tone is going to be different,” she continued. “Why? Because we’re thinking about the customer.”

Having laser-focused insights that enable her to anticipate and answer the real needs and desires of today’s active, mobile and digitally-enabled luxury fashion consumers has been, without doubt, the most important secret to Natalie Massenet’s success as a true fashion pioneer. Indeed, when asked to interpret the personal significance of an Abraham Lincoln quote that’s permanently installed near her desk — “The best way to predict the future is to create it” — Ms. Massenet explained her key innovation strategy: “The most important thing, certainly today, is to follow the consumer. Technology and the consumer are changing so quickly.”

“Women are working, they are making their own money; by moving the store to the desk, we were able to create the future of shopping,” she said. But today, building a website is no longer enough. “The consumer is in the back of a cab, with her iPhone or her Blackberry, on her iPad, she’s tweeting an outfit that her friend is wearing and desperately trying to find out where she got her shoes online. Part of creating the future is to follow this consumer.”

This imperative gave rise to the new Net-a-Porter iPad application, a weekly shopable magazine which not only allows for a more mobile, decentralised shopping experience, but more closely integrates commerce and fashion content than ever before: “The dream was always to make a shopping magazine,” she said. “With the iPad you can actually merge the magazine experience with shopping.”

The new iPad app is only one of a staggering ten ongoing new technology workstreams currently underway at Net-a-Porter. Indeed, in the traditionally closed and hierarchical world of luxury fashion, Ms. Massenet’s “follow the consumer” mantra has rather profound and wide-reaching implications that stretch beyond the company she founded.

When asked about how to fix the dysfunctional fashion cycle that currently means stores are full of cashmere in the middle of the summer and shoppers have to wait 5-6 months to buy a piece of clothing they’ve seen in a streaming runway show, Ms. Massenet, again, puts herself in the mind of the consumer: “There can’t be anything more frustrating than being shown something really beautiful and wonderful that you want, particularly if it’s weather appropriate, and not being able to get it.”

Indeed, Ms. Massenet advocates realigning the fashion calendar to better suit consumers, re-imagining fashion shows as consumer-facing experiences — not insider industry events — that are in sync with what’s currently available in stores. In order to operationalise this sweeping idea, true to form, Ms. Massenet has a wonderfully clever and simply idea: “I don’t think we need to do anything more complicate than skip a season.”

Fashion Pioneers was filmed by Pundersons Gardens. Many thanks to our friends from the fashion blogosphere who live-streamed the event to a global audience. Plans for our next Fashion Pioneers talk are already underway. Stay tuned to BoF for further details.

A selection of images from the event, held at the Net-a-Porter headquarters in London.

Miranda Kerr Updates Her Facebook Status

Miranda Kerr knows that it's not official until it's on Facebook. That's why on Monday she officially changed her status to "married". -

Kerr married long time boyfriend earlier this month, and today gossip rags are buzzing about a possible pregnancy. (Note to self: models can't keep secrets.)

Either way, obviously it's been a good summer for these two!

"I never wear an outfit more than once unless it's like a really cool pair of jeans or a leather jacket."

On an interview with Heat Magazine Paris Hilton made it clear that wearing clothes twice is a no-no for a Hilton heiress. A leather jacket or really cool pair of jeans make it to the top of her list as okay to wear twice if you really have to ( but please note, the jeans have to be super cool).

The 29 year old socialite said that after wearing clothes once she gives them away. So where can we sign up for the gently used clothes of Paris Hilton? Unfortunately in order to squeeze into her practically new wardrobe you have to be part of the ittty bitty titty committee. Paris continued to tell the magazine that it's unfortunate that not all her friends are lacking (oops, we mean, gifted) in having small breasts.

"I'm quite lucky I have small breasts and that means I can wear most clothes. Some of my friends have bigger breasts but I can wear pretty much what I like. It's a real shame though because it means I can't pass my clothes on to them, because they'll be too small around the bust."

At least she's proud of what her momma gave her, but none the less, wearing clothes once or not at all and then giving them away is a bit much (unless you're the one receiving her discarded clothing). Paris Hilton also admitted that she has way too many clothes in her closets (yes closets as in plural) that still have the tags on them!

"I still have so many clothes in my closets that still have the labels on. I see them so often I think I've worn them but then I realise I haven't. So I either give them to my friends or donate them to a charity so they can auction them off."

I bet the charity that receives Paris' discarded clothes has the best dressed under privileged people in the world! Maybe we should find out where those clothes are being distributed to and wait in line for some free Chanel, Valentino, and Dior labels (I mean, I'm not too sure about it though, they were worn ONCE after all…. they might be too worn out)!

The GofG Mad Men Pop Up Party: PJ Clarke's

Go HERE for more pictures by Walter R and tag yourself and your friends!

GofG's first Mad Men themed pop-up party at PJ Clarke's was the hot spot for after work drinks. The midtown bar and restaurant was packed with a professional crowd that could be seen rubbing shoulders with Don Draper and the rest of the Sterling Cooper Draper Price men and women.The juke box playing in the corner and bartenders in bow ties transported people back to the days of 1960s New York.

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If you missed last night's pop-up party, be sure to catch tonight's location…

How it works:

1. Read our Newsletter to find out where the Pop-Up Party is that night/week.


2. Go to the party and get snapped by one of our friendly photographers.


3. Visit the site the next day and tag yourself in the photo gallery.


4. Build up your directory page!

Everyone knows it’s the people not the place that makes a party stand out. Here is your chance to meet other GofG readers with the same sensibilities as you!

No need to email us anymore for help on how to get invited to the parties and events featured on the site. Now, anyone can head to our Pop Up Parties and get caught by one of our friendly photographers, and then tag themselves for their chance to make it into our Directory Pages.

Do you want your Bar/Restaurant as our next featured Pop Up Party? Email Rachelle@guestofaguest.com to get started!

We will be announcing the location of Friday night’s Pop Up Party in tomorrow’s Newsletter. Make sure you sign up NOW so you will know where are going to POP UP next!

The Best Magazine Articles Ever!

I can't go a week without reading an item about how my attention spam is diminishing. I suspect the overwhelming amount of digital information flooding my frontal lobe is in part to blame, though I'm not entirely sure - I never manage to get through the pieces. However, after having a tough time making it through even Snooki's Times profile this past weekend, I've decided it must be true. Which is why I was elated to find this guide to the best magazine articles ever (by Kevin Kelly) floating around tumblr this morning. Practice material!

51 Articles to be exact. Take on two a day if your ADD is up for it, and take solice in the fact that your summer afternoon wasn't a total waste.

From Kevin Kelly:

The following are suggestions for the best magazine articles (in English) ever. Arranged in chronological order. Stars denote how many times a correspondent has suggested it. Reader notes are in italics. For a great way to read long-form magazine articles on a tablet device see my review here.

* Vannevar Bush, "As We May Think." Atlantic Magazine, July 1945.

** John Updike, "Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu." The New Yorker, October 22, 1960. About Ted Williams career framed by his last game. I read it every opening day without fail.

** Norman Mailer, "Superman Comes to the Supermarket." Esquire, November 1960.

* Richard Hofstadter, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." Harper's Magazine, November 1964.

** Tom Wolfe, "The Last American Hero is Junior Johnson. Yes!" Esquire, March 1965.

**** Gay Talese, "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." Esquire, April 1966.

** John Sack, "M." Esquire, October 1966.

** Hunter Thompson, "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depraved." Scanlan's Monthly, June 1970.

* Tom Wolfe, "Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers." New York Magazine, June 8, 1970.

*** Ron Rosenbaum, "Secrets of the Little Blue Box." Esquire, October 1971. The first and best account of telephone hackers, more amazing than you might believe.

** Stewart Brand, "Space War: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Dearth Among Computer Bums." Rolling Stone, December 7, 1972. Written nearly 40 years ago, this account of virtual realities has all the classic props: midnight hours, geek humor, nerd hubris, and other worldliness.

* Howard Kohn and David Weir, "Tania's World: The Inside Story." Rolling Stone, October 23, 1975. About Patty Hearst's kidnapping.

** Edward Jay Epstein, "Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond?." Atlantic Magazine, February 1982. Diamonds, De Beers, monopoly & marketing.

* Frank Deford, "The Boxer and the Blonde." Sports Illustrated, June 17, 1985. Story of a hard Pittsburgh boxer and the woman who captured his heart.

** Richard Ben Cramer, "What Do You Think of Ted Williams Now?" Esquire, June 1986.

* Bill Barol, "I Stayed Up With Jerry." Newsweek, September 1987.

* Gary Smith, "Shadow of a Nation." Sports Illustrated, February 18, 1991. Feature on the Crow Indians — the story that won him his first National Magazine Award.

* Richard Preston, "The Mountains of Pi." The New Yorker, March 2, 1992. Two brothers build a supercomputer from mailorder parts in the New York apartment. All it does is compute new digits of Pi.

* Karl Taro Greenfeld, "The Incredibly Strange Mutant Creatures who Rule the Universe of Alienated Japanese Zombie Computer Nerds (Otaku to You)." Wired, March/April 1993.

* David Foster Wallace, "Ticket to the Fair." Harper's Magazine, July 1994.

** Gary Wolf, "The Curse of Xanadu." Wired, June 1995. The story of Ted's Nelson attempt to heal his personality with his invention of hypertext.

* Susan Orlean, "Orchid Fever." The New Yorker, January 23, 1995.

* Barry Lopez, "On the Wings of Commerce." Harper's, October 1995. An excellent view inside the hidden world of commercial air freight, which powers a big chunk of the global economy. Think Neal Stevenson's glass necklace (see below), but airborne.

** David Foster Wallace, "Shipping Out: On the (Nearly Lethal) Comforts of a Luxury Cruise." Harper's Magazine, January 1996.

* David Foster Wallace, "The String Theory." Esquire, July 1996.

**** Neal Stephenson, "Mother Earth, Mother Board: Wiring the Planet." Wired, December 1996.

* John Gregory Dunne, "The Humbolt Murders." The New Yorker, January 13, 1997.

* Katie Hafner, "The Epic Saga of The Well." Wired, May 1997.

* Tom Junod, "Can you say- Hero?" Esquire, November 1998. A profile of Mr. Rogers.

* Robert Kurson, "My Favorite Teacher." Esquire, March 1, 2000.

* Malcolm Gladwell, "The Pitchman." The New Yorker, October 30, 2000. Part story teller and part sleuth, he gets beyond the simple sound bite to the core of what drives Popeil and his process. The fundamental takeaway is the inseparability of product design and product marketing in building products designed to be coveted by the customer they are target for.

* Rebecca Mead, “You’ve Got Blog.” The New Yorker, November 13, 2000. Profile of two bloggers before I knew what a blog was.

* David Foster Wallace, "Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars Over Usage." Harper's Magazine, April 2001. A tome to the politics of language.

* Edward W. Said "The Clash of Ignorance." The Nation, October 22, 2001. In response to Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations."

* William Langewiesche, "The Crash of EgyptAir 990." Atlantic Magazine, November 2001.

* Steven Kotler, "Vision Quest: A Half Centure of Artificial-sigh Research has Succeeded. And Now This Blind Man Can See." Wired, September 2002.

* Calvin Tomkins, “His Body, Himself.” The New Yorker, January 27, 2003. Profile of Mathew Barney.

*** Tom Junod, "The Falling Man." Esquire, September 2003.

* Stephen Dubner, "The Silver Thief." The New Yorker, May 17, 2004.

**** David Foster Wallace, "Consider the Lobster." Gourmet Magazine, Aug 2004.

* Chris Anderson, "The Long Tail." Wired, October 2004. See the Wikipedia article on Long Tail.

* Gene Weingarten, "The Peekaboo Paradox." The Washington Post, Sunday Magazine, January 22, 2006. Story about the weirdest clown, the Great Zucchini, you'll never want to meet. Keep reading….

* C.J. Chivers, "The School." Esquire, June 2006.

**** David Foster Wallace, "Federer As Religious Experience." The New York Times, Play Magazine, August 20, 2006.

* Jonathan Lethem, "The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism." Harper's Magazine, February 2007.

* Gene Weingarten, "Pearls Before Breakfast." The Washington Post, Magazine, April 8, 2007. Joshua Bell is one of the world's greatest violinists. His instrument of choice is a multimillion-dollar Stradivarius. If he played it for spare change, incognito, outside a bustling Metro stop in Washington, would anyone notice?

* Chris Anderson, "The End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete." Wired, June 23, 2008.

* Gene Weingarten, "Fatal Distraction: Forgetting a Child in the Backseat of a Car Is a Horrifying Mistake. Is It a Crime?" The Washington Post, Magazine, March 8, 2009. Winner of the 2010 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing.

* Mike Sager, "Todd Marinovich: The Man Who Never Was." Esquire, May 2009.

* Thomas Lake, "The Debtor." Atlanta Magazine, November 2009.

* Evan Ratliff, "Writer Evan Ratliff Tried to Vanish: Here’s What Happened." Wired, November 20, 2009.

Thanks to Matthew Robbins, Jim Hausman, Richard Perrin, Louis Rossetto, Steven Levy, Pete Forde, Martin Haeberli, Howard Rheingold, Todd Lappin, Mark Frauenfelder, Thodoris Georgakopoulos, Lee Joramo, Jeb Adams, Jason Kottke, James Cooper, MarkA, Matt LaWell, Erik Price, Donna Lowe, Sam Posten, Bill Fisher, Rodolfo S Filho, Edward Fu, Oliver Hulland, Craig Pittman, Peter Jacobson, Steven Leckart, Robin Southern, Mark Sigal, Brian Burt, Mark Neigh, Bill Barol

What is your favorite magazine article of all time? Email me and I'll add it, or add a star.

Breaking: Tonight's Mad Men Pop-Up Party Location!

Oh, Don. He was never cool enough for Midge, not really, and that became embarrassingly apparent when he accompanied her to The Gaslight Cafe. No wonder she didn't go to Europe with him. But it's season 4, and Don's a new man, living on 6th and Waverly…-

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Free of Betty, free of the kids (most of the time), Don's moved downtown, so it's only fitting he should try to find a new, downtown, Bohemian bar.

But it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks. He still needs something RELATIVELY established, even if slightly more boho chic than the UES haunts he'd go to with Roger.

Tonight's Pop-Up Party, inspired by The New Don Draper

White Horse Tavern

567 Hudson Street

The White Horse tavern has always been slightly beatnik-y, and a long-time fixture of the West Village. Dylan Thomas famously drank himself to death there about ten years before Don would have started attending, but maybe the intrepid ad man could have befriended Jack Kerouac or Allen Ginsberg (or at least gotten some creative inspiration for them?)

We hope you join us tonight for some beers and some good times as we drink to a new Don.

Do you want your Bar/Restaurant as our next featured Pop Up Party? Email Rachelle@guestofaguest.com to get started!

How To Throw A Jersey Shore Party

With the premiere of the second season of Jersey Shore upon us, we thought it fitting to prepare ourselves for this monumental event. So, we hit the tanning booths and grabbed our favorite Ed Hardy shirts, trying to plan our very own Jersey Shore party…

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The Jersey Shore crowd likes to go hard so start practicing your kissy faces and flexing in the mirror. If you haven't been keeping up with your GTL routine (Gym, Tanning, Laundry), then go climb up that stair master, hop in that spray tan booth and hit up your local laundromat. Don't worry though, we've assembled the perfect Jerseylicious party guide for you and your friends!

Location: If you can't make it to the shore, then party in the style of some of your favorite Guidos/Guidettes. You can take the party to your parents basement or your local bar where a fist fight is sure to break out. Just refrain from punching girls in the face, please!

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Guests: Guests have to pass the tan-o-meter test before they can enter the party: they have to reach "Tan O Rexic" or no entry. The guest list should include the hottest Guidos and Guidettes and juice-heads around.

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Food: Be sure to serve Snooki-inspired pickles and JWoww's drunk munchy of choice- ham. Oh, and don't forget to have your trademark Italian boy have his mom whip up an Italian feast!

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Drinks: Make sure to pre-game hard enough before the party but be sure to save room for some "Ron Ron Juice" to fuel the fire for a bar fight later on. Also, make sure you have plenty of bottles of vodka on hand for a little late night hot tubbing. You can even get creative and make your own protein shake infused cocktails.

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"Ron Ron Juice" Recipe

- Real watermelon

- Cherries

- Cranberry juice

- Copious Stolichnaya Vodka

- Ice

*Blend well for a filthy night!

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Dress Code: Rock that Ed Hardy and Affliction all the wayyy and guys, you'll be good to go! Now ladies, JWoww has a new clothing line, Filthy Couture, if you're willing to shell out $300 for a lacey dress that'll barely cover your privates. When in doubt guys, just just oil up those abs and go shirtless, but don't forgot to spike that hair! If JWoww's style isn't your thing, then put on your finest animal prints (make sure it's skin tight) and tease that poof until it touches the roof!

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Music: You WILL play the official Jersey Shore Soundtrack AND "The Situation's" single, titled "The Situation." If all else fails though, just put on anything with a sick beat that you can fist pump to.

JERSEY SHORE PARTY PLAYLIST

1. I Like It- Enrique Iglesias feat. Pitbull

2. Break Your Heart- Taio Cruz feat. Ludacris

3. Get Crazy [Explicit]- LMFAO

4. Hey [Explicit]- Lil Jon feat. 30H!3

5. Ghosts N Stuff- deadmu5 feat. Rob Swire

6. Gettin' Over You- David Guetta & Chris Willis feat. Fergie and LMFAO

7. I'm In The House [Explicit]- Steve Aoki feat. [[

8. Come On- Tiesto vs. Diplo

9. Pump It Up [Explicit]- Paul Oakenfold

10. I Like That- Richard Vision & Static Revenger Starring Luciana

11. Look Out Weekend [Explicit]- Kid Sister feat. Nina Sky

12. Drank [Explicit]- Girlicious

13. Work It Out [Explicit]- Lil Jon feat. Pitbull

14. Last Call [Explicit]- Midi Mafia

15. Disco Pongo- Die Atzen

16. Beat Dat Beat (It's Time To) [Explicit]- DJ Pauly D

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Now that you know the rules of the guido-liciuos game, go out and fist pump with the best of them!

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Compiled by Chloe Post and Cathy Levett

[Photos via Flickr, Photobucket, Nydailynews.com, Nymag.com, Clubplanet.com]

The Best Guests Come Bearing Gifts: Beer Pong Sets

If you're in college (or a recent alum) then day long tournaments of beer games are a part of your typical weekend. These plans can be hindered by missing ping pong balls or lack of clean Solo cups. To prevent these mishaps make sure to always have a well-equipped Beirut (or also known as Beer Pong) Sets!-

Other classic beer games like Landmines and Civil War can also be played using the perfectly plastic wrapped sets. They come complete with two stacks, each stack containing ten, red plastic Solo cups and four orange balls labeled with the letter B on them. It's uncertain where we can find these college worthy gifts but to start check your local stack of newspapers. Now the only thing needed to begin getting drunk and to get this game started is a table!

[Photo via BenjaminSte.in]

Does The Lion Signal The Death Of The Celebrity Restaurant?

The hoi polloi will always want to eat among the rich and famous. Rubbernecking distracts from the food at New York's celebrity canteens. But diners once had a reason to refocus on their plates. This week's reviews of The Lion–one scathing, one mediocre–suggest that's no longer true.

Sam Sifton of the Times and Adam Platt of New York magazine both filed (and piled) on The Lion this week. Reviewing the reviews of celeb restaurants from those publications reveals the genre's decline. Here's how star-studded eateries became Zero Star duds with the critics:

• Da Silvano (1975- ): Greenwich Village's perennial celebrity favorite–they prefer the sidewalk tables, for discretion and all–got Two Stars from the Times' Marian Burros in 1984 and Ruth Reichl in 1998. Frank Bruni downgraded that to One Star in 2006, but made up for it by opening the review with endorsements from Madonna, Tom Hanks and Danny DeVito. The grandfather of starry restaurants is a New York critic's pick.

• Odeon (1980- ): The Odeon made not only Keith McNally, but the formerly overlooked Tribeca. It was Immortalized on the cover of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights Big City. Hal Rubenstein lauded the bistro in New York in 1998 and it's still a critic's pick after 30 years. The Times archives turned up more features than reviews, although we know Bruni won't be eating there anytime soon.

• Indochine (1984- ): This Lafayette Street haunt jumped on the fusion train early, and also fused the fusty uptown and artsy downtown celeb worlds. Awarded Two Stars by Bryan Miller in the Times upon opening (he cited the "gastronomic Lewis and Clarks who have already discovered it"), not even a subsequent Bruni pan could put a damper on its recent 25th birthday celebration.

• Nobu (1994- ):The Tribeca outpost was not the first nor the last in Nobu Matsuhisa's glam, global sushi empire. But it drew the big names (Howard Stern never shut up about it), and still holds a Three Star rating from the Times. Nobu also shows staying power over at New York, where Gael Greene named it one of the 40 most important restaurants in the city in 2008.

• Balthazar (1997- ): Before boldface New Yorkers ceded lunch and dinner to tourists, McNally's SoHo brasserie was the place to be. Reichl gave it Two Stars in its first Times review and it made Platt's list of best restaurants in the city in 2006. Don't let the New Media dorks who still mob Balthazar at breakfast deter a visit.

• Butter (2002- ): Richie Akiva's Lafayette Street venture seriously blurred the line between restaurant and nightclub. The Times' Eric Asimov rewarded the effort with One Star. Platt filed a more enthusiastic piece, praising a place "so ambitious it just might work." The champagne and stiletto set (pictured right) was too busy flooding Butter for its signature Monday night bashes to care.

• Waverly Inn (2006- ) Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter made the jump to restaurateur with his precious Village quasi-speakeasy. Opening pre-recession, Waverly got away with a $55 mac and cheese and won a single star from Bruni and Platt, who both conceded the food was better than it needed or had any right to be, given the movie and media royalty huddled inside. The heat's faded a bit, but not enough to warrant a public phone number.

• Monkey Bar (2009- ): Carter's midtown Waverly Inn facsimile never quite matched the Inn's buzz, despite Vanity Fair pimping it out every month in its party pages. Bruni and Platt each gave a star, although Platt griped that "A-list connections can't cover for D-grade cooking." Eater recently asked if Monkey Bar was "the power dining spot it was once destined to be" in light of a downsized lunch menu.

Kenmare (2010- ): From Beatrice Inn's Paul Sevigny, Kenmare is another restaurant-club hybrid that failed to woo critics (zilch stars from Sam Sifton in the Times, one from Platt) despite a real deal chef (Joey Campanaro). Also confused were the couture hipsters who crammed the basement lounge and gave just slightly less mixed reviews.

The Lion (2010- ): A side-by-side comparison of this week's reviews from Sifton (One Star) and Platt (No Stars) reveal almost comically divergent takes on Lion's food. Sifton describes a "luscious hamburger [chef John DeLucie] pairs with pork belly, provolone, smoked cheddar and caramelized onions." Platt derides a "burger garnished, disastrously, with a flabby chunk of fried pork belly." But they agree on star wattage too dim to blind you from the measly grub. Sifton notes that "Jet Blue customers" join the "private plane" crowd and calls out the "Delta Taus" and "women skating on the thin ice of fashion" at the bar. Platt cringes at "a rabble of assorted frumps and arrivistes." So, average Joes can get into The Lion. But why on earth would they want to?

Given the fleetingness of Hollywood careers and New Yorkers' culinary whims, the most amazing thing about these star-clogged restaurants is their staying power. But if The Lion and Kenmare want to display Da Silvano- or Odeon-like legs, they'll need either a celebrity stampede or overhaul in the kitchen. Or, ideally, both.

[Photo 1 via Hannah Whitaker/NYM, 4, via Purple]

Fight! Fight! It's A Real Fight At Max Fish!

Max Fish may be on the East Side, but last night the scene inside the popular after-concert bar seemed right out of the wild wild West. Luckily, someone had the foresight to catch the brawl on tape!-

It was sort of hard to understand what was going on in this fight, but we gasped right along with the videographer when someone (?) slapped some other guy (?). No idea what was going on, but the tension was palpable.

Highlights of the video include:

• The brilliant, off-camera commentary by some girl (again, ?). We feel her angst when she exclaims "Are you fucking kidding me?", and laughed when she asks "Is that my phone?!" during one of the more tense moments, and "Oh my god, Oh my god" repeatedly throughout.


• The asshole who throws his chair INTO THE CROWD randomly at 0:58.


• The guy in white who is literally lifted UP off the floor by some bigger guy, but keeps punching and kicking at the air.


• The Foley artist-like sounds of smashing glass.


• The way that after the fight is over, even the people in the beer seem to have little to no idea of what actually just happened.

Were you at Max Fish when this all went down? What the hell happened? Does it really have something to do with tshirts?

[Via Young Manhattanite]

Dor Chadash Tu B'Av White Party: Celebrating Love

Go HERE for more pictures by Gabriel Liberty and tag yourself and your friends!

The color red's association to love didn't apply to the white party for the Jewish holiday of love, Tu B'Av. In honor of love, JDate and Dor Chadash brought those who are single or in love together for an event at Greenhouse.-

The celebration was a full house where guests enjoyed an open bar, dancing to the DJ's hits, and even playing the drums. Dor Chadash's goal to organize and network Israeli and American in the New York area was a success. The heritage, culture, and history were not the only aspect that these guests had in common. In addition to their Jewish backgrounds, it seems that their closets were also shared.

Matching pants…

Matching glasses…

Matching outfits.