Snap Judgment: Silver Ear Threads

Bar None ear threads by San Francisco's Enflux

Our very-visual, (almost) chatter-free snap judgment of the day: the super lightweight and low maintenance glam of the sterling silver Bar None ear threads, $15, by San Francisco-based jewelry designer Enflux. (Perhaps) even better: these simple style-helpers are priced right in line with our post-holiday budgets.

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Don’t Call it ‘Frisco: Meagan Reelitz’s Prize-Winning Ring

Diamonds Are in the Cracks Ring by Meagan Reelitz

Oakland jewelry designer Meagan Reelitz

Finding beauty in life’s rough spots never fails to impress. And so much the better if that beauty happens to involve diamonds and San Francisco. That’s just what you’ll find sparkling away in Oakland designer Meagan Reelitz‘s Diamonds Are in the Cracks ring, the grand prize winner in the Jewelry Artisan’s Collective 2011 Design Challenge. The most recent installment of the annual jewelry challenge asked designers to create work inspired by the San Francisco experience and the theme, “Don’t Call it ‘Frisco.”

Using earthquakes as her starting point (and that’s about as real-deal San Francisco as it gets), Reelitz created a piece with both style and historical substance.

“I took the seismographic report from the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake and altered it to fit nicely on a ring band of sterling silver. I then hand-sawed the report into the band. I set 5 diamonds within the cracks,” Reelitz says of her process.

Stay tuned for news of Reelitz’s upcoming exhibition at Maiden Lane’s Manika Jewelry.

 More San Francisco fashion news

Shacking Up: Rare Device + Little Otsu = Cool, New Space

News from San Francisco’s only design store with a name torn from the pages of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan: Rare Device is leaving Market Street for a bigger and better space on Divisadero, where it will partner up with onetime Mission paper goods shop Little Otsu. The planned relocation is set to take place in early March.

Specializing in design-conscious gifts, home accessories, art objects, jewelry and wearables, the new collaborative shop will include a Little Otsu mini store stocked with a full line of publishing products, as well as selected crafts and goods. This is the first time Portland-based, Little Otsu will be available in San Francisco since the closure of their Valencia Street store over a year ago.

Rare Device is currently located on 1845 Market Street and promotes a variety of designers who create modern, handmade, and beautifully-designed goods. We can’t wait to see the new and improved space in the Western Addition neighborhood at 600 Divisidero Street (at Hayes).

Photography courtesy of Rare Device

Cute Underthings for Cold Chicks: Snoa Lingerie (Plus, It’s Eco!)

There’s a reason hot and sexy often end up in the same sentence and frigid bitches in the literal sense have a tendency to act, well, like frigid bitches in the figurative sense. It’s the same reason goosebumping it up in lingerie is a fate most of us leave to models, who get paid to do things like that. Bringing a sweatpant alternative to your next close encounter of the winter kind is Snoa Lingerie, a local company whose sleep and loungewear aims to offer warmth alongside sex appeal.

Billed as “sexy sleepwear for chilly nights,” the line from Anh Oppenheimer, a documentary filmmaker who realized the need for the line when she found herself donning a negligee and socks, and California College of the Arts fashion design instructor Susan Robinson ranges from long underwear-inspired basics to signature items that includes a bell-sleeved nightie with a plunging neckline, a spaghetti strapped red chemise and a bamboo fleece shrug for covering up exposed arms without going the big, schlumpy dad sweater route (you know you’ve done it). Decidedly on the ladylike end of the demure to sizzling hot spectrum, the line strikes us as more every-night wear than let’s-rekindle-that-old-dead-fire fodder. But that’s fine by us (besides, isn’t it what happens on your average ‘ole night that really counts?).

Pieces are made using double layers of fabric for added warmth, and a focus on eco-friendly materials means fabrics like silk hemp, modal and wool jersey, as well as local production at a facility in San Francisco.

“It seemed the most eco friendly thing to do,” says Oppenheimer of the choice to manufacture close to home. “No ships, no trucks. Also, we could make sure that the facility is a fair one in terms of wages and conditions….I can shake the hand of the woman running the shop, we can take one garment back if there’s a few errant stitches and they’ll fix it up for us quickly. It’s a good feeling.”

To see Snoa in person, you’ll find a few pieces available at Workshop on Union Street, and you can warm up to the full line in the online shop.

Photography courtesy of Jan Hammock for Snoa Lingerie

Blogger Fashion Project: 365 Ways to Wear Crochet

San Francisco blogger Kathryn Vercillo (a.k.a. @CrochetBlogger) has just launched a 365 project for 2012. In 365 Ways to Wear Crochet, she’ll be showing off different ways to wear crochet and pairing it with both casual and dressy outfits that she really wears each day. Below, her first outfit – which features the first shrug she ever crocheted.

Learn more about this 365 fashion project here.

The Outfit: Blue crochet shrug, black turtleneck sweater, fringed denim skirt, black patterned fishnet-style tights

Crochet Detail: Blue acrylic crochet shrug (the first shrug she ever made)

The shoes: black flats

This post originally appeared on Crochet Concupiscence.