Reviews: Transformations Cardi & Friede Tank

Before moving into New York City I owned a car. A Saturn Vue specifically that I bought while in Colorado (it was my second Saturn after owning a 1992 SC throughout high school and college and if I hadn’t moved down here I totally would have bought a Sky Roadster next). One of my dealer presents was a windshield insert to protect my interior on hot, sunny Colorado days. The salesman showed me twice how to unfurl the thing and re-shape it from a rectangle into a elastically-held circle. It seemed so simple when he showed me but in real life it took me about 2 weeks to figure out how to properly expand and collapse the thing. As in I drove arund for a little while with it fully rectangle-ized in my back seat.

And that sums up the way I feel about the Transformations Cardi ($98). Looks so easy when Anthro does it but try doing it real life and it’s quite different.

I swear I tried to love it. Really! First of all, the turquoise color I tried on was lovely…though I vote it’s more teal (darker green-blue) than turquoise (lighter blue-green). And I love the brass-colored buttons that are epaulet reminiscent. Then the issues began.

It requires a lot of patience to change the way you’re wearing the cardi. There are buttons in three places: on the shoulders, on one hip (outside) and on the other hip (inside). The result is that you can wear the cardi criss-crossed as the product shot illustrates; crossed at the hips with a deep v; or open. The only status I liked was open. The criss-cross was a disaster — frumpy and bulky and wrinkly and yuck. Crossed at the hips wasn’t much better. Open was OK though there was too much fabric hanging out at the bottom. The buttons were the most frustrating part. I wish these had been snaps instead. Undoing each button from the shoulder just gets annoying. I tried a medium and a large but neither was really a winner. Back to the rack.

While the cardi wasn’t a winner, the layer underneath was. It’s the Friede Tank ($38) which I tried on in a medium. For those interested there’s also the coordinating Deryl Briefs ($18) which I did not try on. The tank has so many great colors in it — green and grey and black and turquoise and teal. Better yet the teal coordinated really well with a few of Anthropologie’s current sweater offerings: the Transformations Cardi above and the Tie-Front Cardigan ($78) to name a couple. The racerback and knotted front straps add some nice touches to an otherwise basic top. $38 isn’t exactly a steal but it’s inexpensive by Anthropologie standards. For a piece that really is versatile without having to jump through hoops the price is justifiable.