Plenty of trendspotting, rants and raves across the fashion web this week. Take a look at what bloggers online were saying this week

Nichelle at 55 Secret Street has a Q&A with Author (and yes, Lucky Beauty Editor) Jean Godfrey-June.

Yet another affordable fashion line has gone the way of the designer capsule collection. Stiletto Jungle shows off Courreges for La Redoute.

Bag Snob wants to know if you’d be willing to shell out $1k for the Hermes Silky Pop Bag!

Beauty Snob reviews Lamisilk Foot Therapy.

Modern fashion with a vintage twist has Coquette falling in love with Jovovich-Hawk’s Fall Collection preview.

eBelle5 introduces the stunning new Coach Chelsea Handbag Collection

Get gorgeous summer skin naturally in the produce aisle of your nearest grocery. Fashiontribes gets the juicy scoop on using fruits & veggies for skincare.

Girlawhirl thinks Peace, Love and Earth jewelry is right on target

KRiSTOPHER’s not into not carrying a plastic bag, but she digs the cheeky chic “I’m Not a Smug Twat” bag.

LA-Story suggests

My Fashion Life takes a look at this seasons summer staple - The Shirtdress.

Second City Style shows you How To Shop the Summer Sales for Your Fall Wardrobe

SheFinds’‘ has the scoop on celebrity sunglasses — get the shades seen on Angelina, Ashlee, Aniston and more

Hot Stuff: StyleBakery.com lists their favorite totes, flip flops, hats and more to keep you looking and feeling cool this summer.

Check out Styleaholic Najwa Moses’ new Music & Style Foto Blog. This week she covers Will I AM’s Fall Fashion Preview

Trend alert! Bye bye bubble skirts says Stylebites says Stylebites says Stylebites!

Stylehive Hive5: Kick it up a notch with one of summer’s hottest trends - bright, bold and beuatiful technicolor eyes!

Tammy at The Jewelry Weblog is doing a “Jerry Maguire,” as she rants about how some in the jewelry industry need to “get rid of that has-been hardcopy-mindset copyright BS on [their] sites” and recognize the 21st century and the blogosphere.

Join eBeautyDaily and explore where and how you spend your beauty dollars.

Unless you’ve been living in a Mongolian monastery, I am absolutely certain you’ve heard about the iPhone. Actually, I’m pretty certain that if you’ve been living in a Mongolian monastery you’ve heard about the iPhone. Apple’s marketing push behind this product has been no less than suffocating. It’s everywhere you go and Apple will assure you that this thing is greater than everything, including sex.

Does it match the hype? From a chic, got-to-have the latest rare tech item perspective, it does match the hype somewhat. I can see the fashion forward, must-socialize-with-the-latest-and-greatest in New York whipping out their iPhones, receiving e-mails, sending messages and reading very important pdfs on this phone.

Is it for the rest of us?

David Pogue of the New York Times deconstructed the phone (no, not literally) in his review and provided some eye-opening cons versus pros that may make getting this Jesus-like device a no-so-certain endeavour.

Some cons he outlines:
-The internet on AT&T’s network is S-U-P-E-R slow. Accessing your favorite web page may take longer than going through dial-up. Remember those days?

-It takes approximately SIX steps before you actually get to making a call.

-It doesn’t support Flash or Javascript. That may be a deal breaker as many videos (more than half online) are encoded in Flash.

He didn’t delve into the topic of ringtones, but I am certain that if many NYC PR girls can’t get their latest Fergie track on this new fangled device, they’re going to be pissed.

There are also many pros as well, not to be completely negative on the subject. One of my favorite features of the phone (just reading through the review mind you) is going to be the ability to select which voicemail I want to hear. Instead of going through each voicemail one by one, you can select the voicemail from the caller id. Another feature is its physical stature, it is very…VERY slim. In pictures it may look huge, but this is a small sleek device. It’s Apple fool!

The glass is literally scratch resistant. You can view full web pages, not hobbled versions you see on cell phones now. You also get the functionality of an iPod mp3 player all in one.

Is the phone worth having? Without actually holding one in my hand (damn you Apple!!), I can say that the jury is still out. I’d hold off until the second generation refines its shortcomings, and when that happens, get one.

Read Pogues’ complete hands on review here.

**Update 10:13am EST: Apparently Gina Hughes of Yahoo is not feeling it.

The news broke earlier today that Liz Claiborne died at the age of 78 of complications from cancer. Already mourning over the earlier news this month of Gianfranco Ferre, there’s no other way to talk about this without feeling extremely sad by this loss.

Those who knew her personally are already coming out speaking of courage in starting her own company and seeing it through to be the most successful designer line/company started by a woman. Without knowing her personally, I can unequivocally say though that that courage is dwarfed by the amount of strength needed to fight cancer. She did it from 1997 till 2007. The great thing is that even with her death, she is still fighting cancer. Her company continues to be one of the largest breast cancer fundraiser in the world. We interviewed a vice president at her company while back and she restated the commitment to fighting this disease with all of the company’s great works and events around the world.

While Liz Claiborne will forever be known in larger circles as the woman who ushered in the era of the female professional via her designs, I will simply know her as the woman who fought fiercely against insurmountable circumstances and overcame them.

Yesterday I talked about the pregnancy dress that seems to be all the rage, today I realized why they are all the rage. Sometimes I won’t let a subject die. Perusing through the internet I found a Yahoo fluff piece. You know, the typical Yahoo fare, lots of information on a subject but the feeling as if you walked away getting nothing from it? This time it was on a pair of UK recording artists tearing up the airwaves here and over there, Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse.

If you’ve been living under a rock and never heard of them, go back to your rock, nothing to see here.

If you have heard of them, you understand that Winehouse channels her inner Ella when singing and makes the artists on this side of the ocean look not so good. I am a fan.

But back to the frump.

The interesting thing I am noticing from both these artists aside from the drug induced, rock star life that they seem to cling onto is a penchant for wearing the pregnancy dress. That’s the new official name by the way. That’s less the case with Winehouse who seems to be all over the map anyway than with Allen, take a look at the photo above. I’d venture to say that by now and at this rate of success they are able to afford stylists and I’m guessing their stylists are fans of this type of dress too, which in turn means that this trend may be around for awhile depending on whether their popularity ebbs or flows. There are a lot of lemmings out there trying to recreate looks.

So before I am accused of doing something that I singled out Yahoo for, let me drop a gem so you feel as if you walk away from here with something.

This pregnancy dress thing is coming from somewhere, I think I located the source. That source is Amy Winehouse and Lily Allen but there may be others. If you know of a celebrity wearing the pregnancy dress, who is clearly not pregnant, let me know.

photo credit: Carrie Musgrave (Lily Allen)

I’ll get flamed for this but here goes:

I’m not a fan of the pouf, flirty summer dress and will explain in 100 words or less. It makes every woman walking down the street in Manhattan look as if they are pregnant. Mind you I’ve been wishing for something to de-denimize the female populace of New York City, but the old adage be careful what you wish for has never been more appropriate than in this particular case.

For some reason, it seems as if these type of dresses don’t appreciate the shape of someone who just worked out over the winter with their personal trainer fighting to lose every last inch of fat-pound. While these gripes might be petty, small and pedestrian, they are real… to me at least. A quick example of this is the 7 designer pieces pictured in Ellen Tien’s “A Weekend Retreat” piece for the New York Times. While all 7 are beautiful pieces and allows women to loosen that vice grip on slinky denim for the summer (denim that was all the rage last summer, and the summer before that, and the summer before that summer…I go on and digress), I still feel as if something more in the vein of Kate and Kass is the way to go, if I had to pick from the photo, the second from the left works well and the third from the right works even better. But why pick from the photo in the first place, why not just abandon the pouf dress madness?

Flame on.