Spruce up your holiday wardrobe!

Kate Torralba’s Leg Love

It’s like every Gossip Girl fashion fanatic’s prayer was answered. With the nippy December wind blowing and Kate Torralba’s Leg Love (available in SM Department Stores and her Greenbelt 5 boutique), I bet fashionistas are pulling on their (fill in the blank: colored, patterned or textured) leggings and strutting their stuff like they’re on the Upper East Side.

When I stumbled upon Kate Torralba’s collection of tights (in collaboration with City Lady stockings) while Christmas shopping in SM, I was overjoyed. I had been on the lookout for textured tights for a while and my search was proving difficult. Finally, a complete range of fashionable tights right here in Manila! Outfits multiplied in my mind as my eyes browsed through the different styles of leggings on the rack in SM. A bright pair of tights can easily add a surprising pop of color while textured tights can add a luxe vibe to any outfit. Leg Love is affordable at P299 a pop for the colored leggings and P399 for the patterned ones. And the even greater news? The quality is fantastic! I’ve taken my bright blue tights out for a spin already, and the material feels durable and well-made. The sheen is also quite pretty, and I got a lot of compliments for my über-cool tights (and my legs! Hurrah!). I gotta say I’m feeling a lot of love for Leg Love, and I’ll be sure to stuff my Christmas stocking with these stockings.

BAYO 2009 Holiday Collection

What I love about Bayo is how they perfectly infuse current fashion trends into basic pieces that you can use forever. Whether it’s summer or Christmastime, Bayo’s offerings are fresh, stylish, so now — yet I find myself using their pieces throughout the year. In the recent Philippine Fashion Week, Bayo showcased its 2009 Holiday Collection of fashionable looks and even more covetable pieces.

Keeping warm this season won’t be a problem with Bayo’s tops and dresses in classic, cozy knit. Add on any of their fabulous cover-ups — plaid jackets, trench dresses and cropped cardigans — and you’ll look like ready to jet-set to a colder climate. However, legs were still on display under brightly colored mini skirts, denim shorts, and dresses. Scarves are also a popular accessory this season, and while they definitely added attitude to the outfit, the delicate details of the scarves kept the looks soft and pretty.

Color combinations were young and cheeky, as seen from the neon lipstick, plastic sunglasses, and bright I LOVE ME bags accenting the outfits. Purple, the color of the season, was present in several looks and added a festive feel to casual graphic tees and satin button-down tops. Trendy tartan plaid also shone through in tops, coats, and even shorts. The best part? They’re all pieces you can wear again and again.

With one week to go until Christmas, our schedules are filling up with parties and reunions to attend, and Bayo has got an outfit for you for all of them, whether it’s a last-minute shopping trip with the girls or your annual family reunion.

Rootote Bags

I love me some bags. I love classic little clutches to quirky lunch boxes to slouchy handbags to adorable printed duffels. But I’m a sucker for roomy, sturdy bags that I can dump all my stuff in. (In my senior year of college, for instance, my school bag was a large houndstooth baby bag from Baby Couture.) I tend to be lazy when I’m running from place to place, so instead of being a good girl and carefully sliding my things in pockets and whatnot, I just throw everything in. The problem is I can never find anything in them. Sometimes when my phone rings, I have to riffle frantically through the chaos in my bag before I can locate it. Even bag organizers get lost in my bags!

My fellow bag-lover friend Joni introduced me to Rootote bags, a collection of totes from Japan with unique designs and a special “roo-pocket” (“roo” as in kanga-“roo”) on the side, a cleverly hidden pocket where you can quickly stash (and retrieve) your small-yet-terribly-important belongings, like your keys and your phone. This little pocket is a simple yet pretty ingenious idea — after all, life’s too short to be stressed over a ringing phone that I can’t find in the tornado of items in my

Before I even found out about the “roo-pocket,” I was hooked on the interesting designs. Rootote is available in different designs, ranging from cutesy prints to edgier styles. I fell in love with a tall brown tote splashed with the French greetings Bonjour and Au Revoir in purple — subtle and nonchalantly cool. Perfectly-sized, incredibly sturdy and bursting with personality, Rootote is the perfect companion to my Christmas hustling-and-bustling, and even all the days to come. It may even be the quick answer to my New Year’s Resolution: “Be more organized.”

Rootote bags are available in Bratpack Greenbelt 5, The Block, Robinsons Ermita and Robinsons Galleria, and on roototephilippines.multiply.com.