The Men - are they all out of work, or turned into jobbers? They are running amuck at sales -
Vivienne Tam - so many it felt like a construction site, and at
Cynthia Steffe - men appeared, like apparitions hoarding with abandon. Would you like us to storm your sales while you are down to your skivvies or Man Spanx?
Most Improved Sale - Thanks to Cynthia Steffe for installing guards. Boo to women who had no dignity and insisted on stripping as it was against the rules and the pleas of male security who begged women not to display their Victoria's Secrets.
Pushing and Shoving - More women MUST be working out. Wouldn't sample sales be a better place if it was a little bit more "Glee," Gwynnie Paltro guest appearance and a little less "Jersey Shore"?
Sample Prices? - Just so we're clear, a 60% off retail reduction is simply not an old-school sample sale (off of wholesale), especially when Fifth Avenue stores were already offering the same.
Leifsdotter was the swankiest sample sale setting, but not deepest discount!
Professional Place Holders - Everyone has a thousand friends on Facebook, but at a sample sale, 1-3 max.
Are people setting saving spots for cash like Merchant of Venice tickets at Central Park?
Beware the angry shoppers behind you.
Bragging Bloggers - Stop the line blogging about how you clocked the sample sale at a preview before the die-hard devotees! And how they won't be restocking.
Best Insider Access - Kudos to
Gilt City for offering early access for $5 to
Catherine Malandrino and others. It’s worth the investment.
True discounts - The $20 for anything and everything Cynthia Steffe and the
Lafayette 148 with $40 skirts along (props for plus size finds) with the $50
Shoshanna samples, $5 intimates at
Natori are just about the deepest discounts.
A-List Designer Treatment -
Rebecca Minkoff,
Isaac Manevitz,
Kokin,
Colette Malouf, Vivienne Tam treated discount-divers like full-price customers.
Indie designers - No not the ones plastered in Vogue.
Patronize smaller ones that sell in boutiques like
Anni Kuan that are well-made and priced.
Consignment shops - Sample sale-aholics worked themselves and their credit cards into a frenzy will be probably be dumping their sample sale slip-ups in the consignment shop after-market.
Soon we'll need a clock keeping track of the number of samples sales, like the one for National Debt... hmm any correlation? The unofficial count was 200 sample sales in the last week causing sample sale fatigue to set in. Stock, but fewer real samples.
Women feeling pressure to buy after they've waited in line in extreme weather, fought off opponents, defended their finds and held in their bladders. Even if a friend tries talk you out of buying a
La Perla bra with feathers at a “steal" of $80, it can be easy to make rash decisions on a post-
Starbucks bladder, an empty stomach and exit waving a “V” sign to the nearest blogger interviewing you for her VLOG.
~Nancy Brenner
Posts
