Amazon‘s the place you can get your winter coat, your Haus Laboratories fix, and your seasonal accessories—and anything you want to buy multiples of without blowing your budget—in a single cart. (Apparently, it’s also where Bella Hadid gets her colorful pants.) But navigating its seemingly infinite selection of products can be a huge undertaking, no matter how strategic you are at keywords. Amazon Fashion knows this, and is hoping to make it a lot easier—and less time-consuming—for Prime members to find the absolute best pieces on the site.
Last summer, Amazon introduced Prime Wardrobe. The try-before-you-buy feature allows Prime members to have up to eight items of their choosing sent to them for a week to test out, then they can return what they don’t like. (They’re charged only for what they keep.) Now the company is announcing an additional service that operates more like a subscription box: Called Personal Shopper, it’s essentially a stylist that makes recommendations of brands and products you might like based on a survey that lets you detail your preferred aesthetic and fit, curating your box accordingly. It’s available exclusively on the Amazon app, and will cost Prime members $4.99 a month.
Courtesy of Amazon
“Personal Shopper is providing curated help for customers to shop the catalog, to get style advice, to have someone who’s their stylish best friend shop on their behalf and give them highly personalized recommendations across their preferences,” Tony Bacos, Amazon Fashion’s chief technology officer, tells Glamour. “With Prime Wardrobe, customers are building their own experiences. Personal Shopper is taking that convenience to the next level.”
Instead of picking out your own pieces, Personal Shopper does that legwork for you: It’ll recommend items it thinks you’ll like, from which you select up to eight favorites to be sent to you. You get a week to test-drive them, and then you can return what you don’t love. (Returns are free.)
Beyond the initial style survey, Bacos explains that there are a few ways you help inform Personal Shopper of what you’d like to see in your box. A few days after you submit, you’ll receive an initial selection of products that you get to weigh in on: You identify what you want sent to you, what you don’t, and why. Once that’s done, your first shipment goes out.
“The more the customers are willing to share about their preferences, the better we’re able to do on their behalf,” he says. It’s kind of like, well, having a personal shopper: By giving feedback about what’s working and what isn’t over time, the experience and recommendations become more refined.
In the year since introducing it, Bacos says they’ve had “over a million customers of all shapes, sizes, and motivations” use Prime Wardrobe. Still, they’ve noticed a few recurring behaviors, like how it’s become a tool for discovery for some shoppers: “Anytime you’re buying a brand, there’s a sort of nervousness around fit and quality—Wardrobe lowers that risk. We also see customers putting the same item in two different sizes in a box, if they aren’t certain of what size to order.” With Personal Shopper, it’s hoping to build on that and offer some guidance in navigating Amazon’s product selection.
At launch, Personal Shopper is available only on women’s styles; the service for men’s is expected to be rolled out in the near future.
Former first lady Michelle Obama has always had sage advice to share in speeches; in her best-selling book, Becoming; and now, in a new personal essay in People. In honor of Mother’s Day, Obama penned a deeply personal essay in which she describes the important lessons her own mother, Marian Robinson, passed onto her.
“My mother is a woman who chooses her words carefully. She’ll sometimes speak in clipped sentences, her wisdom packed into short bursts and punctuated with an infectious smile or a wry laugh. It’s a style that makes her a favorite of everyone she meets—a sweet, witty companion who doesn’t need the limelight,” Obama wrote.
Obama added that as she grew older, she realized just how important that manner of conversation really was and how it truly reflected her mother’s parenting style. “Because when it came to raising her kids, my mom knew that her voice was less important than allowing me to use my own,” she wrote.
Malia, Sasha, and Michelle Obama attending the Democratic National Convention in 2012.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
According to Obama, that meant her mother “listened a lot more than she lectured” when answering all the questions she threw her mother’s way.
“Why did we have to eat eggs for breakfast? Why do people need jobs? Why are the houses bigger in other neighborhoods? She didn’t chide me if I scrapped with some of the neighbor kids or challenged my ornery grandfather when I thought he was being a little too ornery,” Obama wrote. “She listened intently to the lunchtime conversations I had with my schoolmates over bologna sandwiches and nodded patiently along to tales of my contentious piano lessons with my great aunt Robbie.”
Obama continued that in today’s world, it may be easy to see her mother’s actions as “negligent” because she allowed her children to “rule the roost.” But, she noted, the reality was far from that.
“She and my father, Fraser, were wholly invested in their children, pouring a deep and durable foundation of goodness and honesty, of right and wrong, into my brother and me. After that, they simply let us be ourselves,” she wrote.
Obama added that now, as a mother of two nearly grown women, she sees just how important that freedom is.
“… I see now how important that kind of freedom is for all children, particularly for girls with flames of their own—flames the world might try to dim,” she wrote. “It’s up to us, as mothers and mother-figures, to give the girls in our lives the kind of support that keeps their flame lit and lifts up their voices—not necessarily with our own words, but by letting them find the words themselves.”
Countless finance experts tell you that everyone should have a budget—you can personalize it to include your wants and dreams, but it will help you reach your goals. Most months I barely like to look at the balance in my account, let alone examine an itemized version of all of my spending choices. (Another $5 chai latte, really?). But in the spirit of resolutions, I ripped the bandage off and downloaded a budgeting app—and it’s made all the difference.
While at first I was mortified to see pie charts illustrating bad habits, I soon became obsessed with how the app both created financial goals for me to hit each month and tracked what I did spend to give me easy ways to save. I did my test run on the Clarity app because it’s designed to help millennials with debt (aka me), but there are tons of great options, each tailored to a specific need. If you’ve racked up subscriptions to newsletters and expensive gift boxes, Trim can help you cut back. If you’re about to move in with your partner and need help splitting expenses, look no further than Honeyfi. And the list goes on. It’s like all those experts say: Your goals are your own, just find the best tools to help you stay on target.
Here’s a guide to the best financial apps out there. Time to make money moves.
The fashion world is mourning today in the wake of designer Kate Spade’s death at the age of 55. But it’s her impact far beyond that insular community that many are thinking about upon hearing the news.
Truly, ask any woman over the age of 25 today about getting her first Kate Spade bag and she’ll probably have a memorable story to tell you—and there’s a good chance it’ll involve a black nylon boxy bag. It was a magnificently simple cultural marker; a quiet status symbol—and an entry point into the word of designer fashion for myself and so many others.
To me, that bag was a sign that I’d made it. I was a young magazine assistant at Jane in late ’90s, basking in the glow of New York City and being part of a world that I had grown up dreaming about from my bedroom in Indiana. I may have had the cool job, but that didn’t mean I always felt cool. Oh, but that chic black nylon bag with the small—but instantly recognizable—black and white label made me feel like I belonged. I’m 42 now and I can still vividly remember the feeling like it was yesterday.
It’s like that bag had superpowers and every time I carried it, there was a bit more swagger in my walk. I was a New Yorker now—and I could take on anything in my path. The best fashion can transform you and bring out your best self. Spade’s designs could do just that, but—with most early styles clocking in at under $200—also never felt too exclusive or out of reach.
Here, real women (including some Glamour staffers) share their beloved Kate Spade memories.
PHOTO: Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
The famous and highly coveted nylon box bag, in one if its iterations.
Domi Le, Physician, 37
“Kate Spade was a cultural icon whose designs have marked major milestones as a woman for me. My first Kate Spade New York bag was also my first fancy designer purse and I remember being excited about my ability to own one and feeling like a grown-up. After college, I’d saved up money from teaching piano and got a simple black nylon tote to carry with me during my medical school interviews. It still sits in the back of my closet as a reminder of how far I’ve come. Now as a mother, a KSNY diaper bag swings from my shoulder. Her pieces represent an understated, timeless elegance to which I continue to aspire.”
Michelle Ruiz, Writer & Editor, 36
“I’ve never been much for designer bags (shoes over bags, I say), but in the fall of 2000, in my first year at the extremely preppy University of Virginia, I needed a Kate Spade bag like air. For my birthday, in between semesters, my mom took me to Nordstrom at Roosevelt Field mall on Long Island, I chose the little black nylon box tote with the trademark little label, and it was pure joy. It made me feel, even fleetingly, that I, Long Islander, belonged in this strange, Southern place. And, of course, it went with everything. I was pretty devastated when I drunkenly lost it at a date party the next year—but I guess I get why someone stole it. We all wanted a Kate.”
Johanna Dickson, Book Publicist, 34
“I went to a wealthy private school in New Jersey and pretty much every girl in my class had a Kate Spade bag. Either the small box bag or the messenger bag. I begged my mom for months to buy me one even though it was technically out of our price range. I’m not sure what changed, but right before Junior Prom, she offered to buy me the box bag. I literally planned my prom outfit around it. I still have it to this day and I don’t think I can ever part with it.”
Azadeh Valanejad, Glamour Social Video Producer, 28
“Growing up, Kate Spade was always the epitome of being a modern day Holly Golightly/Audrey Hepburn to me, I’ll never forget when I was in middle school and we came to New York for the holidays and I got my first Kate Spade bag. And then a striped tote in high school. And when I started to work, I would always save up to buy her accessories. Even today, my desk at home is filled with Kate Spade office accessories and my apartment has touches of Kate Spade home scattered throughout.”
Jenny Meyer, Publicist, 38
“I saved up my allowance to buy my first Kate Spade bag—the gold mini backpack—and thought it pretty much made me the coolest girl in school. It was the very first fashion purchase I made myself and I wouldn’t even let that bag touch the floor. Thank you, Kate Spade. You brought beauty and color to so many of us.”
PHOTO: Boston Globe
Spade at her Boston store in 1999
Jamie Stelter, News Anchor, 36
“I got the black box bag first, but the more memorable one for me was the silver messenger bag I got for my high school graduation. I carried it every day in college and still have it today. I think I need to break it back out now.”
Laurel Pinson, Glamour Digital Director, 38
“I’ll never forget the feeling of getting my first Kate Spade bag in middle school—the Sam bag, a boxy, black nylon satchel with “Kate Spade” prominently displayed on the outside. It was a proxy for everything I aspired to be—modern, pulled-together, and above all, fashionable. “Kate Spade” meant style. I lived in New York, where knock-offs littered Canal Street—the ultimate sign of an “It” bag, really—and I relished the idea that I owned an authentic original.”
Sasha Charnin Morrison, Style Director, 53
“Kate Spade did change my life in the 1990’s. I went from a long-in-the-tooth Hello Kitty lunchbox to her nylon logo bag. And that made me feel sophisticated. She had a fabulous eye as an accessories editor and gave us something relevant to carry that was accessible, chic, elegant and made me feel like I had arrived.”
Jaime Maser Berman, Publicist, 39
“I grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania (a suburb of Philadelphia) and went to a fairly large high school (my graduating class was 1000 kids) so had considered myself in the know and up on the latest trends… until I arrived at Boston University in Fall 1996. There was so much diversity and wealth there, I realized very soon I was a small fish in a very big pond and had a lot to learn and absorb in the style department. When I was rushing sororities in spring of 1997, the name Kate Spade was so ubiquitous, I naively thought she was a popular girl at rush everyone was talking about.
Kate Spade bags were a status symbol in those days. I wanted one desperately, but my waitressing money was paying for rent (and my weekend nights out), and I couldn’t imagine splurging on a designer bag. But the desire didn’t wane.
Fast forward to my graduation in 2000, when my boyfriend at the time said his family wanted to get me something big for graduation to have for my first job. Without hesitation, I named the Kate Spade shoulder tote. It was a sky blue meets gunmetal color in nylon. Rectangular box shaped with black fabric handles and a zipper closure and the small black label with the Kate Spade logo in white print discretely placed on the front. I dreamed about that bag daily and was ecstatic when I received it as my graduation gift. I remember feeling like a true grown-up when I carried it; it bestowed a confidence on me that I needed as a new graduate making the interview rounds at the various PR agencies in Boston, seeking my first post-college publicity job.
I eventually retired the bag, and other favorite bags took its place, but the Kate Spade tote brings back fond memories and holds a special place my heart.”
A vintage secondhand Kate Spade nylon bag currently on Etsy
Andrea Halpern, Real Estate Agent, 41
“I vividly remember getting a Kate Spade wallet my senior year of college. My friend, Randi, got it for me because she worked at Bergdorf Goodman and it was brand new there. My friends and I also used the famous big tote that year too. It was the cool bag.”
Jessica Blankenship, Writer, 31
“I stole a kate spade purse from a department store when I was 15 and wore it every day for years. I was a poor kid at a rich school. That bag was like armor and camouflage and a hall pass that diminished the pain of being on the wrong side of my high school’s economic divide. If you get that the transformative power of fashion makes it arguably the mightiest and most relevant art form, then you get why Kate Spade mattered to the highest degree, aside from being a brilliant artist. She gave a generation of young women the ability to feel composed and put-together while they were growing up during times that made them feel scattered and scared. Affording her brand didn’t matter — she defined an aesthetic that echoed throughout fashion at all price points. Even if Kate Spade’s aesthetic wasn’t your style, it was always an option and that had unspeakable power. Her designs created a language of broad acceptability. It was a uniform anyone could choose to put on and instantly feel polished and palatable in the halls of privilege.”
“Few designers are revered in the Midwest, where I grew up, like Kate Spade. I remember begging my parents for one of her poppy, bright, quirky designs only to have them laugh at price. I finally got my chance to own one—a $300 fit-and-flare dress (with pockets!)—years later when I moved to New York City and was interviewing for my first magazine job at Seventeen. It was the first designer piece I bought for myself, and the pride I felt in wearing it was overwhelming. It hasn’t fit for three years, but it’s still in my closet. It’s too sentimental to part with.”
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In the cover story for the new issue of Vogue, tennis star Serena Williams revealed “everything went bad” both during and after her emergency C-section delivery of her daughter Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr. She recounted how she found herself short of breath, thought it might be a clot based on her medical history, and had to advocate for herself to finally get the CT test and blood thinner she believed she needed. Her suspicions were quickly confirmed as a pulmonary embolism was discovered and removed. After that scare, over the next few days the clots made her cough so much that her C-section stitches broke open and the blood thinner she was taking caused hemorrhaging at the C-section site, causing a large hematoma to flood her abdomen. That’s some scary stuff for anyone—greatest athlete of our time or not—to go through.
Williams is now opening up about the experience even further, posting an extremely personal Facebook post (complete with a new, adorable video of Olympia) yesterday.”I didn’t expect that sharing our family’s story of Olympia’s birth and all of complications after giving birth would start such an outpouring of discussion from women — especially black women — who have faced similar complications and women whose problems go unaddressed.” She goes on to say that, per the CDC, black women are more than three times more likely to die from pregnancy or childbirth-related complications than white women. (According to the CDC, between 2011 and 2013, the pregnancy/mortality ratios were 12.7 deaths per 100,000 live births for white women and 43.5 deaths per 100,000 live births for black women.)
“We have a lot of work to do as a nation and I hope my story can inspire a conversation that gets us to close this gap,” Williams wrote. To be sure, her story already has inspired women to come forward, which you can see just in the comments on her post so far. One woman named Chaunta Stevens wrote: “During my first pregnancy I developed toxemia and preeclampsia. I was in my 31st week of pregnancy with extreme swelling in my hands, legs and feet. I told my OB during my visit that I didn’t feel well and that the swelling was getting worse. She reassured me that that was normal, nothing to worry about and sent me home,” she said. “The next day my husband took me to the ER and I was immediately admitted due stroke-range high blood pressure and high protein in my urine. I was transferred for a emergency C-section due to placenta detachment. My daughter was born 9 weeks early at 2 lbs 4 oz.” Stories like these remind us how important it is to advocate for yourself in every patient-doctor situation, and Williams’ post spreads even more awareness.
Perhaps Williams said it best herself: “Let me be clear: EVERY mother, regardless of race, or background deserves to have a healthy pregnancy and childbirth. I personally want all women of all colors to have the best experience they can have. We can help others. Our voices are our power.”
