K - Attack of the Sample Sales

So I bought a Catherine Malandrino dress the other day, and I’m absolutely fucking thrilled. It’s the first thing I own by her, and I’ve always loved her designs. Not really being in the socio-economic bracket to buy her stuff on a regular basis, this is quite an achievement. (A fucking awesome one!) How did I pull off getting a $500 dress for $200? Members-only sample sale websites.

I’m not doing an advertisement (although I should look into that...), but these things are the shit. I started with Gilt Group. Spent an hour every day poring over the shit from brands I’d never be able to afford and still couldn’t afford with their discount. Valentino Red down from 5k to 3k? No thanks. But damn, those Marchesa dresses are GORGEOUS. Then I expanded to Hautelook and RueLaLa, and Gilt branched off to include Gilt Fuse. By the time Ideeli came around, I was over-e-mailed and couldn’t take another one. Plus, for some reason that name sounds stupid to me, even compared to RueLaLa, which is somewhat awkward to say out loud. At any rate, out of all of them, Hautelook is my favorite. They run the right brands at the right prices, and I suspect they have fewer subscribers than RueLaLa, because they don’t have the same quantity problems that the latter always seems to experience. The only things I can never buy successfully online is jeans, because with my figure I need the little bit of stretch in the fabric, so I usually try to stalk the Barneys sales for designer jeans. I don’t know what the hell is up with fashion, but since when is an hourglass figure unable to fit in ANY fucking jeans? Since ’91, actually, stupid me. Maybe I should get back into drugs…I hear blow really keeps your weight down. Fuck you, Kate Moss.

But anyway, there’s a major problem with these sites. When you spend an hour a day, every day, five or six days a week looking at expensive designer items, you get this bizarre financial numbness. Rather than, ok, I do not need a fifty dollar tank top, it’s omg that tank top is only fifty dollars! Or that Marc Jacobs tank top is only eighty dollars!! You lose the little voice inside your head that goes, “it’s a fucking tank top – go to Target.” [Side note: to be fair I probably shouldn’t say that, because I mostly don’t buy clothes from Target. But I know people who do, and these are people whose fashion sense I respect – so I don’t feel that bad about advocating something I won’t do personally. But seriously…go to fucking Target.] Where these sites are really good is when you have money to burn and you’re looking for the cachet of a brand name you really just can’t do on your own. Well, I guess that’s the whole fucking point, but my larger point is – you really shouldn’t be buying shit there just because it’s cheaper than you could get it elsewhere. Only if you really, really want it. Like my new dress – I thought it was honestly strikingly lovely when I saw it, and that’s the kind of reaction you want for something you’re going to spend that much money on.

My worst offender is designer handbags. They are my Achilles heel. I used to spend hours a day poring over every site I could think of staring those luscious leather bags I could never afford. Not just these, but Bloomies, Bluefly, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom’s, Saks, even Macys. I even looked at sites like Shopbop – although I think their web interface is poorly designed and tedious to use. I told myself, ok, just get yourself a nice designer bag in all of your major colors – black, white, and brown. But now I need a grey one, and there’s an MJ purple one I’m currently lusting over. And those deep jewel tones are so in right now – and that one is just such a great size! I can so easily justify to myself, ok, well it’s only $250 plus tax, or, I have a $50 AmEx giftcard left over from something, or that’s a really good deal for Rebecca Minkoff… This is where M comes in. She is usually my safety valve. She checks a) if it’s really as cute as I think it is, and b) if I should be spending that much money. She has saved me literally thousands of dollars by being like “ehh, I don’t know about those pockets,” or in one case, actually yelling at me to prevent me from spending $70 on a T-bags dress I had no use for. The one time I didn’t listen to her resulted in a nice black Cole Haan bag that she now admits is much cuter in person. (Although sadly, it’s a bit out of use at the moment because it’s not big enough.)

The thing you have to remember about these sites is that you're always competing against bitches with way too much time on their hands. Women who sit there and count down the seconds before that sale opens, ready to click furiously and immediately purchase that Gryson boot in every single fucking size. But there's an art to it that I've picked up during my tenure as someone who shops for a hobby. The trick *is* that furious clicking. You have about two minutes (if that) to scan the page before that gorgeous purse is gone. So what's the solution? Clicking on the item immediately and adding it to your cart - preserving it for your (possible) purchase. This, of course, only gives you about ten minutes to decide if you even have $350 to spend on a clutch from Tory Burch. So this turns the entire art of members-only shopping into a process of spending hundreds of dollars based on let's say 12 minutes total of consideration. And that's fucking brilliant - because these folks are counting on the fact that even a small percentage of their subscribers will make that quick decision. But assuming you have any vestige of fiscal awareness left after a few months of these sales, how do you know if something is worth betting those twelve minutes against a few hundred dollars? When something is really, absolutely lovely - which is a conclusion you will come to within 30 seconds of looking at something, likely even less. And that's how I ended up with my dress.

Just so you know, the point of this post was to brag about my new dress. It will be worn at M’s epic Christmas party, and I will be the shit. Flaunt it if you’ve got it!