Blog

• Marios in Seattle and Portland has taken off 60% off men's and women's collections.
• Lileo in Toronto's winter sale is going strong. Visit to get up to 70% off fall/winter clothing and footwear.

• 69 Vintage in Toronto will be hosting a 2-day sale December 26th and 27th.
• Dover Street Market's (in London) autmn/winter sale begins at 11am on December 27th.
• Lileo in Toronto will start its sale at 8am on December 26th.

Augustina, a stylish little store in Toronto known for its high-end accessories just added online shopping.

Selections include bags from Andrea Brueckner and Lauren Merkin, jewelry from Alex Woo and Me&Ro, shoes from Loeffler Randall and sweaters from Augustina's own knitwear line.

• Silho in LA is having a sample sale until September 15th. Get 10-75% off select items.
• Stylegarage in Toronto is having a sample sale on September 16th from 8:30am.
• Get free shipping off fall items and denim at Jake.
• Auto in New York is having a "Fall Yard Sale" on September 14-17.

• Bird in New York, is taking 75% off its spring/summer lines (via NY Mag).
• Factory People in Austin and online is having its semi-annual sale which means 35% off the spring/summer goods. Website shoppers can use code "Sale35".
• Alhambra in Seattle, is taking 30-50% off all clothing and select shoes/accessories through August 31st.
• Hysteria in Alexandria, VA and online is taking 50-60% off all its spring/summer selection.
• Secrets from your Sister in Toronto has select merchandise 30-75% off.
• Find Outlet in New York is having its semi-annual warehouse sale at its Chelsea location. Come by August 3rd-6th from 12-7 for clothing and accessories from Paul & Joe, C&C California Edward An and Constanca Basto among others.

If you ever find yourself in Paris and are interested in fashion at all, you'd better head to Didier Ludot's shops. His eponymous boutique is located on 24 Galerie de Montpensier and is basically like a vintage clothing museum. An offshoot of this boutique is another shop called "La petite robe noire"(Little Black Dress) and is located on 125 Galerie de Valois. The shop collects the finest new and vintage black dresses and has become such a resource that Ludot literally wrote the on the subjects.

Drawing inspiration from the likes of Ludot, is Little Black Dress Shop in Toronto. The shop takes a more accessible approach to the idea, stocking mostly little black dresses from Canadian brands.

This Comrags dress is a shop bestseller. We're just happy to be able to get a few of Comrags' minimalist pieces online.

Alongside all the black dresses ready for a swanky cocktail party are some more casual pieces.

Traveling about North America, we noticed more than one independently owned brick-and-mortar store doing brisk business online. Our observation has been that if you have truly unique products to sell (and not the same "hot" brand of jeans on sale 500 other places online), you can slice yourself a nice piece of the online pie. But retailers are funny. Some will jump online from day one, some will be dragged in after years of requests, some will just ignore the whole online thing as a particularly stubborn fad. But what we've found interesting is retailers from different cities deal rather differently with online shopping. Let's start with some statistics.

We took the number of brick-and-mortar stores in our top cities and calculated the percentage of these stores that are online. The results are a little skewed in some places but they're fairly representative. Take a look:

• Austin: 7/28 = 25%
• Boston: 12/33 = 36.36%
• Los Angeles: 33/129 = 25.58%
• New York: 68/179 = 37.99%
• San Francisco: 43/104 = 41.35%
• Seattle: 28/87 = 32.18%
• Toronto: 10/63 = 15.87%
• Washington: 14/41 = 34.15%

San Francisco has the highest percentage which isn't surprising but actually this result is the most suspect. Our data is skewed by the 7 Rasputin locations in the area. As a whole San Francisco retailers, especially the clothing stores, are somewhat behind in jumping online. Especially considering the 8 million tech companies in the area.

Next is New York. Not surprisingly, we've found New York's small retailers to be the most saavy retailers around. It seems like every store in New York has PR representation. When we've approached stores to do some kind of article or interview, New York retailers have consistently been the most receptive and welcoming. And not surpisingly New York retailers have realized the value of online shopping and have jumped in.

And now we move to Canada, or Toronto to be exact. It seems like Canada is thinking "Online Shopping? More American trickery!" or something like that. A big city like Toronto and only 15.87% have online shopping. Worse yet, the stores that do have websites are often shoddy and haven't been touched in years. Come on Toronto retailers, if Magic Pony can do it, so can you.

We'll be updating these here statistics as we add more stores and cities to the list, but here's a quick tidbit. The most impressive online retailing of any city in North America is actually not New York, but Chicago. It seems like any cool store we run into from Chicago has a thriving online operation. We'll be talking about a few of these stores in the days and weeks to come.

We've now been to a few of the best comic book shops in North America, and with The Beguiling, we can check another one off the list.

Steve and Kristin from Magic Pony introduced The Beguiling to us as being voted the second best comic book store IN THE WORLD, behind some store in Belgium. All we can say is: believe the hype. If you're interested in comic books and/or strips at all, or graphic novels, or anime, or alternative art in its many forms, you're going to want to visit The Beguiling. Meanwhile, they have a selection of books and art you can buy online.

There are a lot of interesting stores in Toronto, but none more memorable than Magic Pony. The store is a truly magical collection of designer toys (the best among Western and Asian toys, including the work of emerging Canadian designers), art, prints, T-shirts, books, magazines and a few other random bits. Their gallery space holds host to regular art shows from emerging and established artists and designers. Here's some of what they're carrying right now:

Cool T-shirts.

Wacky plushes.

Art books.