STYLES

Grab Bag: Target Gets Jazzy

Burberry Beauty lipstick1) A Harlem Renaissance
A few years back. New Yorkers took the L train to Wiliamsburg, Brooklyn, to score cutting-edge fashions. These days, some of the cool factor has blown back across the river and above 116th Street. Starting Sunday, Target.com celebrates this hipification of Harlem (and its new store in the nabe), selling pieces by local designers, including a 1980s-bright knit dress by Stephen Burrows ($35) and pretty print bikinis by Isabel and Ruben Toledo.

2) A Place At the Table
Clack, clack, clack. Oh, sorry — that's just us opening and closing a lipstick from Burberry Beauty ($27-$55, Nordstrom.com and Burberry.com). The sturdy magnetized tubes and compacts make sexy, satisfying snaps as they shut. The actual cosmetics — all imprinted with that iconic plaid — are equally respectable. Miss Manners may disagree, but we think these products shouldn't be confined to the powder room —use them at dinner with pride.

3) Thanks Very Munch
If a nice kid from Chicago went to French pastry school, he or she might dream up beer pretzel brittle. Wait! That's exactly what Windy City chocolatier Nicole Greene of Truffle Truffle did, deliciously combining milk chocolate, stout and salty bar snacks into a hard-to-stop-eating treat ($12) that's two parts haute cuisine, one part frat-boy dream. Greene's other inspired decadences include salty chocolate-dipped shortbread ($14 for 12 pieces) and curry caramels.

Black + Blum's Box Appetit lunch box
4) Southern Manner
Buckhead-based interior designer Suzanne Kasler is known for Gallic-by-way-of-Georgia rooms. Her new collection for Ballard Designs mixes Southern charm with Euro-utility (think Charleston meets Copenhagen on an Ikea budget). Available Sunday, pieces speaking with a mixed-yet-charming accent include Marie Antoinette-ish chairs ($529), burlap-wrapped vases ($49) and sunburst mirrors ($99) paying homage to Ra, Apollo or maybe those sad, beheaded French royals.

5) The Desk Setup
In our office, nuking Lean Cuisines in the microwave amounts to Russian roulette. Will you catch Ebola from the filthy turntable? Will an intern steal your Hot Pocket? But with Black + Blum's new Box Appetit lunch box (above, $22, Homebody, 715 8th St. SE; 202-544-8445) one can, instead, seal up a nice meal in a stylish, reusable, disease-free plastic vessel resembling a haute to-go container (and also containing a handy fork). Ridiculing co-workers who have the plague from undercooked Stouffer's lasagne is uncool, though.

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