Comme Again, Store It All Up

I'm not normally a fan of store/business-run blogs, mainly because 9 times out of 10, they're devoid of character and full of badly written puff pieces (this goes for certain magazine-run blogs too). Tokyo Bopper, which I discovered via momus in 2007, is one of the shining exceptions to that rule. It might be written by the staff of a Tokyo shoe shop with a clear agenda to show off the shop's offerings as modelled and styled by them (see pic immediately above), but still manages to look like it's a blog by people, and not by a shop*.

My other recent find of a blog-truffle has had a very, very recent start on the other end of the world from Tokyo- this month, in fact. The BLACK Comme des Garçons store in New York has only been open for six months now and is only intended to last until the recession lifts. The blog written by the shop employees- who don't identify themselves by name but blog as BLACK Comme des Garçons- is mainly about the merchandise, and beautifully-taken shots of it as well as of The Girl With The Topknot (I call her that because I envy her ability to do that with her hair and have no idea what her name is). It'd be very easy, under the circumstances, for this to be just another collection of pretty pictures- but I admire The Girl With The Topknot's styling a great deal, and in fact it's her presence in blog pics that made me take a prolonged look at it all in the first place. I do hope the staff keep on at this- I'm not at all averse to looking at lovely pictures, and I have high hopes of future enjoyment from this blog.

*It also helps that Yama-sama (in the first pic), who models most frequently for the blog and is- like her coworkers- a FRUiTS regular, is unafraid to go against blogland trends, which more often than not feature a sea of high heels. And as a longtime fan, she must get points for consistency on that score.

pics from is-mental.blogspot.com and the BLACK Comme des Garçons blog (pics used with permission of the authors- I was so kicked to get the mail telling me I could use them)