Target’s got a winning fashion trifecta lined up for the month.

Fashionistas looking for a budget-friendly fashion fix can score with designer Anya Hindmarch’s new handbag collection, Sigerson Morrison’s footwear collection and the new Jonathan Saunders clothing collection, all launching in mid-October. 

Saunders’ line hit Target’s shelves this past weekend. The Scottish-born designer offers a fresh take on color blocking, knitwear and clean-line silhouettes. Among our trendy favorites: the colorblock dress in white/ebony ($30, above right) and the ombre print skirt in blue whale ($27, above left).

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Each week, let us call your attention to some of our favorite, fun, entertaining and amazing shopping blogs. They elevate shopping to an art. Or an obsession.

1. Ambika B. of (Into) The Fray shops thrift stores, eBay and designer shops, takes pictures of herself trying on clothes in Anthropologie dressing rooms, and regularly dishes about the boyfriend. September, her blog’s second anniversary, found her rhapsodizing about art, dolman sleeves, crescent necklaces (left), water bottles, Ecoist bags and wildly cool coasters.

2. Slave to Target is a hilarous romp through the aisles of your favorite discount mega-retailer, with a witty person by your side. Blogger Jill waxes poetic about a paprika-colored handbag for $25 (especially wonderful after she compared it to pricey satchels at Bluefly.com).

3. Tara at She Finds must have watched the Emmy Awards, because she’s been trolling through a pretty selection of crystal drop earrings (right). Browse Swarovski at $12 to Calypso for $90, and practice that saucy head turn that makes them twinkle in the light.

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Pink is suddenly the color in kitchens. It all started in 2001 with a pink KitchenAid stand mixer ($300; right). Each purchase included a donation to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, launching KitchenAid’s Cook for the Cure initiative, which has raised more than $5 million. Now there’s a whole line of Cook for the Cure products, including:

• a five-speed blender ($130)
• a pair of silicone-tipped tongs ($10)
• a mixing-bowl set ($25)
• a can opener ($15)
• a five-piece knife set ($50)

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Blame it on Elvis. He made jumpsuits stylish in the ’60s and ‘70. Of course, technicians and laborers (not to mention prisoners) wear them still. In the past, designers have dabbled with the jumpsuit idea, but they never fully commit. Spring 2009 may change that. Jumpsuits (and rompers) were all over the runways at the recent New York shows. It’s as if the fashion elite all jumped on a conference call and said: “Hey, let’s all make jumpsuits!”

Thanks to the skilled eyes at WWD, and the thorough runway coverage of Style.com, we’ve found some examples of the jumpsuit parade. Some looked pretty, sleek and elongating, like a black one by Ralph Lauren (pictured right), a shiny white one from Proenza Schouler or a draped gold satin one by Diane von Furstenberg (pictured left). The drape of a pale taupe one-piece from Derek Lam and a fabulous Halston take on the style looked wonderful (maybe because with all the draping and looseness, you couldn’t really tell they were jumpsuits). (more…)

New York’s Fashion Week is going full steam under the Bryant Park tents, with more than 250 runway shows planned (there and in other scattered locations around the city). The shows of styles for spring 2009 started Friday, they begin every hour from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., they almost always start late, everybody pretends not to look at celebrities and pundits are wondering what the top American designers will trot out in such touchy economic times.

A few well-knowns have already shown their stuff, including Nicole Miller (pictured), DKNY (who is celebrating 20 years next spring), Herve Leger by Max Azria (can those bandage wrap dresses get any tighter?), and Diane von Furstenberg (who was inspired by Diana Vreeland for spring).

Today some of the heavy hitters emerge: Carolina Herrera, Isaac Mizrahi, Proenza Schouler, Marc Jacobs. If you really want all the details on every show, you’ll need a subscription to WWD. If you want to know, but not shell out the dough, you can find slideshows and details from The New York Times (don’t miss Cathy Horyn’s daily blog - she’s a snappy writer and she’s great at spotting stars and trends), Style.com (the online iteration of Vogue), InStyle.com (with live coverage all week) and the Glam fashion bloggers.

The official Web page of the shows has information, as does Fashion Week Daily (they’ve got video). Other fun sites and blogs to watch include TeamSugar, New York Magazine, and who knows which bloggers (ShinyStyle is there and a fun read).

If you’re reading this on your trusty Sony Vaio, better turn it over and look for the fine print. Then go to this Sony site, to find out if yours is one of 440,000 Vaios being recalled because of faulty wires and overheating problems. Nineteen models in the TZ series (made in 2007-2008) are potentially problematic. Apparently, wires were improperly placed, were wearing, then short circuiting, then overheating.

Sony, which announced the recall Thursday, said it has gotten more than 200 reports of overheating, including seven people who were burned, according to the Associated Press. About 72,800 of those laptops are in the U.S., Reuters said. If your product code and serial number pops up on the Sony site as one of the troubled Vaios, Sony promises to come to you for on-site repair at your house or office (or you can send it to a service center).

Sony, you may recall, was also the maker of defective batteries that forced the recall of many thousand notebooks (from Dell, Apple, Hitachi and others) in 2006.

We’ll be thinking a lot about politics in the next few weeks: Obama and Biden, McCain and . . . whoever his running mate will be. But plenty of Americans’ are going to get worked up over something much more intense and competitive: political buttons. Collecting them is a passion of thousands that has given birth to publications, books, auctions and The American Political Items Collector, the largest group of button groupies. There’s no way to begin to dissect the complexities (and lucrative nature) of this hobby, so we’ll give you some fun facts and sites to check out. The buttons (known as cellos) were first issued for the 1886 presedential campaign. Among the most popular are Harry Truman and John Kennedy buttons, according to collector Jeff Figler.  Mark Warda, the author of 100 Years of Political Campaign Collectibles, told MSNBC  that hard-to-find buttons can be very valuable. Ron Wade, another major collector, says that a 1920 James Cox/Franklin D. Roosevelt button recently sold for more than $100,000. (more…)

CVS Pharmacy, the ubiquitous drug store, is planning an assault on upscale beauty retailers. Beauty 360 is the name of the planned stores that CVS will start opening by year’s end, according to a story Friday at WWD.com.  Sources quoted in the story said the first two stores will open in Washington, D.C. and Sacramento, will be between 2,500 and 4,000 square feet and will eventually expand to 500 or 1,000 stores. Beauty 360 won’t have the words CVS in sight, although they may be in adjacent buildings or inside of existing CVS stores. The WWD story quoted a CVS executive as saying the sleek and modern Beauty 360 stores will carry 32 brands of high-end products (not counting fragrances) currently sold only in department stores or in specialty stories such as Sephora, Shoppers Drug Mart and Ulta. CVS execs crowed about their competitive edge in terms of sheer numbers. CVS will have almost 7,000 stores by year’s end, they have 4 million customers a day. They said 60 percent of the U.S. population of women live within 5 miles of a CVS. Sephora’s Web site says that they are the nation’s leading retailer of perfumes and cosmetics, with more than 91 stores in the U.S. and 400 in Europe. Perhaps the day is coming when you’ll be able to pick up some Laura Mercier or Benefit with your batteries and cough medicine.