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Comme des Garcons' guerilla stores are meant to be temporary experiments in avant-garde retail. But in the case of the very first guerilla store that opened in Berlin in 2004 the experiment didn't stop when CdG left town. The organizers of the store continued the operation, reincarnated as Lil Shop. Lil Shop sells vintage Comme des Garcons and Junya Watanbe in addition to CdG accessories, selections from the current season, and various other accessories. The shop resigned their site late last year, and now offers online shopping.

(These awesome necklaces are exclusive to Lil Shop)

And so we find another cool Scandinavian shop that'll ship to the US. Pepper hails from Bergen, Norway and just opened up their online shop. The selection is mostly a mix of fun, hip Scandinavian and European pieces, with some American names thrown in for good measure.

Marc by Marc Jacobs

April 77

Cheap Monday

Acne

Fafafa

April 77

A month or so back we found Swedish online shop Tres Bien and haven't stopped talking about it since. Well, a little while ago we somehow ran into Branten and something tells us we're going to be equally enamored with this shop.

Quite the ambitious endeavor, Branten is a Swedish web shop, a web magazine and also has an open showroom in Stockholm. The focus is on Scandinavian designers, particularly up-and-coming names (no Acne, Diesel, J. Lindeberg, etc). The online shop and magazine is available in both Swedish and English. And there's free shipping to anywhere in the world. Somebody pinch us.

Of the two dozen or so labels on the site right now we recognized exactly three of them. So you'll want to see the goods designer by designer. We're sure we'll be talking more about the site in the weeks and months to come but here are two designers that jumped out at us right off the bat.

Pimpinette

Stella Nova

It's been a long time--too long--since our last installment of our International Shopping, Online series. So we're especially excited to introduce you to Tres Bien.

Tres Bien began as an online shop based in Lund, a city at the very southern tip of Sweden. It's now a thriving online destination as well as two physical shops (named Holiday, in Lund and Malmo) focusing on mostly Scandinavian designers that are up and coming, avant-garde and often both. If anything, it's a great representation of the enormous and diverse amount of fashion talent coming out of Scandinavia, whether it's designers working on unique, colorful T-shirt designs or minimal, avant-garde dresses.

The shop stocks Henrik Vibskov and Wood Wood and April 77, but we're going to focus on designers that are new to us.

1206 is a boutique and clothing line out of Copenhagen. Each season they release a line of T-shirts and hoodies centered around a particular theme. This latest is the "Good Lock" collection. Most refreshing of all? Every other design isn't a dumb advertisement logo tee.

From JC Report's London gift shopping guide we found BStore an ambitious boutique with quite a well-groomed designer lineup, combining edgy, progressive labels from Europe, Japan, the UK. The shop opened in 2000 on Conduit Street but recently moved to a larger Savile Row space. Like in all our International Online postings, international shipping is available.

Their online shop sells only a fraction of their stock but there is quite the selection of men's and women's shoes. The clothing however is limited to a handful of pieces.

Bernhard Willhelm sneakers

Cambridge boots

Eley Kishimoto sneakers

Eley Kishimoto heels

Marrie blue flats

Marrie boots

Christine Bec officer's cap

Bernhard Willhelm jacket

Bernhard Willhelm skirt

Bernhard Willhelm hoodie

Cosmic Wonder trenchcoat

While searching for online sources to buy Henrik Vibskov we ran into No-one, a remarkable little shop in London that appears to also ship overseas. We thought it would be a perfect shop to feature in our International Shopping, Online series.

At this point in our blogging/shopping-guide-building lives, we're particularly into stores that introduce us to new, promising brands. In No-one's case, one of their buyers actually worked with designer Maaike Mekking to create a line of "classics with a twist" under the store's own label (that gets bonus points with us).

Also new to us was PPQ (Pretty Personal Question). The cult British label focuses on careful tailoring to create a chic, stylish collection that's particularly strong in dresses.

Naturally No-one is quite the supporter of British labels, with selections from Mine, Bi La Li (which you might've seen before on Le Train Bleu) and Emma Cook (not pictured).

Men are also taken care of here. Alongside Henrik Vibskov's funky wares are sweaters from Scottish knitwear co. Lyle & Scott . . .

and shirts from Rushmoor, a label we couldn't find any info on at all.

Be sure to also take a look at No-one's accessories. They're unique and fairly affordable.

Styleserver is a bit of a departure from previous episodes in our International Shopping, Online series in that the whole site is in German and so we're pretty sure they don't ship to The States. But we decided to highlight the site anyway because it came up time and time again in the stocklist of cool indie German labels. Plus we think it's fun to peek into what other countries are doing in fashion right now, just for a bit of perspective.

Now if you think of German fashion as on par with, say, Italian governance or English food or Canadian culture, you'll definitely want to check out Styleserver. While not all brands on the site are German, a lot of them are, and on the whole they're rather nice. Contrary to the "drape some jersey on a dress form and call it fashion" school of independent design, many of these brands present pieces that are (at least going from the photos) well tailored, make good use of various fabrics, and generally serve as attractive, stylish cold weather pieces.

Our favorites were from German labels Adddress, Presque Fini and Sarah Heartbo (whose store we mentioned in our Berlin shopping guide).

Adddress

Now that we've been doing this ongoing "International Shopping Online" series, we figured it's a good time to remind everyone of one of our favorite sites for international fashion window shopping, Mousseshop. We first discovered Mousseshop years ago and have in fact ordered from them. The shop is run out of Germany, with one actual retail location in Dusseldorf (it came after the website). The shipping price is reasonable for international shipping, but you just have to forget you ordered anything at all and you'll get a surprise in the mail in about a month. At least that was our experience. Anyway, they just uploaded all their fall items and we thought it was as good a time as any to check in on them.

For fall fashion '06 at Mousseshop, it's all about Danish label BZR. It's a new label for us (and we imagine most US shoppers). Their knack for finding interesting Euro-centric labels is what keeps us coming back to Mousseshop.

And if you're already picking up some clothing or shoes, you might as well take a look at their myriad accessories. They're colorful, they're fun, and they're usually pretty cheap.

Started in 1970 as a small boutique in Molton Street Brown has managed to go big without losing its edge. Now there are six stores in all, four of them still on Molton Street, that cover the gamut from T-shrits and jeans to avant-garde to bridal.

With Number Nine and Yohji Yamamoto from Japan, Victor & Rolf and Dries van Noten from Belgium, Alexandar McQueen and Aquasctum for the UK, the store has a knack for picking clothes that are somtimes avant-garde, but always accessible. There's little in the store that'll have you thinking "who would where that?" but yet most of the clothes will make you stand out in the crowd. There's to another 35 years.

In this a new series for us, we've decided to take a survey at the interesting and exotic online shopping destinations we've found that aren't in North America. Our first stop is Luisa Via Roma.

Comprising of 3 boutiques in Italy (the largest in Florence), Luisa Via Roma is all about high-end fashion. They typically carry 3 types of goods: 1) well-known European luxury labels presented in greater variety and depth then you're going to find in The States (e.g. Lanvin, Givenchy, Missoni, Dior, Alexander McQueen) 2) lesser-known European labels that haven't quite made it over yet in any quanity (e.g. Marithe' Francois Girbaud, Pierluigi Fucci, Takada Paris) 3) American labels whose day in the US sun has long since passed and who look rather strange next to the European labels (Juicy Couture, Seven for all Mankind).

The selection is unabashedly expensive ($3000 jacket? sure, why not) but the Roma's online shop gives you access to items that you simply can't find anywhere else online (No, not even Yoox) A shopping note: all items as priced include a 17.5% VAT. This fee is removed for foreign shoppers. But with shipping and with import fee charges (you'll might get a bill from FedEx a few weeks after the fact!), think of the price you see as roughly the final price to your doorstep.

Take a look around, we think you'll like it.