I’m Elise Loehnen, the most recent hire here at Beso—and a recent Los Angeles transplant, too. Speaking of: Anyone have any thoughts about where my new (!!!) husband, Rob, and our two beloved cattens, Dot and Fletch (I refuse to acknowledge that our twelve-pounders aren’t kittens anymore), should live in the city? Considering all options…
So here’s my deal: I’m originally from Missoula, Montana, where I grew up with chickens, cats, dogs, horses, and my own “mountain.” These days, though, I seem to spend most of my time hunting around for things that are beautiful and useful, whether it’s at my favorite flea market in Connecticut (Elephant Trunk), my favorite dress-laden boutique in NYC’s West Village (Albertine), or at any number of awesome websites that I troll at all hours (more on all of these spots later). For the past decade or so, I’ve been an editor at Conde Nast in New York, primarily at Lucky Magazine, where as the Editor at Large (and ultimately Deputy Editor) I got to write guides about shopping the cities of the world, and a column about all the random (but I would maintain, covetable) things I found to buy online. Hand-beaded Navajo barrettes? Leather “Possibles” bags turned out by war re-enactors that are actually undeniably chic? Any takers?
I grew up in an editorial tradition where my job and sole duty was to canvas these cities that I wrote about as comprehensively as possible, so that readers would be armed with all of the info they could possibly need to make informed decisions about where they chose to spend their time shopping. If I missed a boutique worth writing about, that was a fail. How could anyone trust me? To that end, what was an otherwise pretty glamorous gig often turned into a deathmarch. When I wrote a guide on Paris, for example, I walked every conceivable, boutique-dotted street. And since I’m dorky enough to carry a Fitbit, I can tell you that that netted out to about 14 miles of walking per day. Easy justification for what became a two-croissant-a-day habit. When it comes to canvassing the web, what I can’t track in miles, I can track in hours: This office supply round-up that I did for Beso? It took me about 18 hours of clicking around, at a minimum. I know…martyr. 
But the point of this ramble? You can trust that Marissa, Diana, and I will be spending our days tirelessly looking for the best stuff online so that you simply don’t have to. Best stuff sounds pretty vague, right? Well, we’ll be looking for the best stuff that we like, but we need to hear what you like, too: So talk to us, because we’re here to serve you. You can email all three of us at: help@beso.com, you can tweet us @beso, @eloehnen, @rissacontreras, @heydianaryu, you can talk to us on Facebook by liking Beso and writing on our wall, and you can register for the site and start “favoriting” the finds you love, so we can add them to our stream.
Happy shopping!
