While I’m preparing my house for another family celebration, my niece Lil A has been busy carrying on the fashionista gene. I’d mentioned before that we share the same birthday (hence, the “4/18 Club”), but as she’s developing her personality, it seems that we have a lot more in common than a mere date. If that first photo does not sum it all up for you (I believe I also skip toward the boutique in the very same way!), may I submit the following evidence:
She loves shoes…
bags…
mini ODJs (outfits du jour)…
But most importantly, once the shopping high is gone, she’s outta there! We’ve got things to do and places to go, people! No time to waste!
A girl after my own heart. And one day I suspect my Chanel collection 
.
Happy New Year, everyone, from the 4/18 Club.
Tags: Chanel
It started with that photo above, which led to a trunk show months ago where I pawed the supple, nubby leather and drooled over the bag. To be honest, I didn’t remember all that much about the bag after I left the viewing but the leather definitely made an impression on me. It was not smooth lambskin like in the spy photo. The sample bag had traveled from one trunk show to the next, town to town, and still the leather seemed so hardy. So tough yet luxurious. I was sold and it quickly made my short list for Cruise 2011 buys. Fast forward to an episode of Gossip Girl (I swear I only watch it for the fashion) and I am just dying in anticipation:
Then come the Christmas rush and many hours of jockeying for position on wait lists at various stores, and I finally receive the bag–color coded by CHANEL as brown–which in real life is somewhat part taupe, part elephant gray. But as soon as I pick up the bag, the leather seems…off, somehow. It’s definitely lambskin and while lovely in its own right, is not exactly what I thought I was getting.
So off I go on the Purse Forum to research this Chain Around bag, and finally it dawns on me that there is one variation of this bag in buffalo leather, which is most likely what I’d seen at the trunk show. However, the colors that I’d seen at the show are now being released in lambskin. And the only one that’s in buffalo is this pale, pale blue-gray version, so similar to my beloved gator flap. This photo is courtesy of a member of the Purse Forum and the cause of my most recent bout of bag madness:
Anyway, off I go, setting off a small five-alarm fire in my head as I rally my buddies/enablers to help me find this buffalo bag. Apparently it is in Asia and possibly in Europe. Not in the US in the medium size. C’mon, a little ocean can’t stop me, your intrepid shopaholic, right? Well, the distance, no, but there is a nasty little price difference in Asia (almost $500) that is cause for pause. So from 1-3am this morning I was on the phone with Europe. Yes, it felt like I was calling the entire continent for this bag. I found it but in the wrong size and one boutique in London promised to put me on the wait list in case another one comes in. So now, sleep-deprived and grumpy, I’m trying to make sense of all of this.
First, it did actually take me 3 tries to find the perfect one in taupe. This particular model is what you might call challenging. It’s the perfect size/shape for me, holds tons without being super heavy, and the color is gorgeous. Those are the pluses. But it is also oddly uneven and has a super long strap, which I’d have to McGyver or find professional help in permanently shortening it to fit my frame. The first bag that came to me had a nick in the leather (yes, it’s meant to be distressed leather but a puncture in the leather is no good). The second one was obviously lopsided. And the third one appears to be the charm (only partially uneven in an insouciant way)…
…unless the evil voice in your head is still pining for that buffalo skin. So second, given all these permutations I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks, I know I’d have to see the bag in person before buying it–there’s too much room for lopsidedness, and I’m not sure I can rely on the word of a sales associate that the one he/she is sending me is the “perfect” one. Buying a bag from overseas is effectively a final sale, so I’d really have to want it very badly to assume all these risks. In thinking this over, I don’t have a great sense of assurance that they could really send me the perfect bag, especially since there are not that many for them to pick from. We are so used to having so much inventory in the US that we don’t know what to do with all the choices, but shopping overseas is more or less about making a quick decision because of limited supply. And as OCD as I am, there seems to be too much room for error in buying this particular bag over the phone. That’s the sane head talking.
And yet…and yet… That’s the insane heart talking.
I pop a couple of Alka-Seltzer for breakfast. Fashion indigestion is how I start this day. My head tells me to stick to the taupe and see what next season brings; perhaps CHANEL will release more bags in buffalo here and possibly in a color less high-maintenance than pale gray. And when that happens, I will be happy that I didn’t jump through all the hoops just because the pale buffalo is so elusive now. My head also says that perhaps on the next trip overseas, if it’s meant to be, I will run across the blue buffalo and it can still happen. My head tells me I only want it because I can’t readily have it. Finally, it tells me to enjoy the one I do have and be done with it. STOP pining. That only leads to needles in your heart.
And yet…and yet…
Tags: Chain Around, Chanel, Cruise 2011, Gossip Girl
For some of us, Boxing Day is a secular holiday that falls on the day after Christmas. It may (depending on your employer) buy you an extra day off at work to spend more time with family and friends. Or in my case, with strangers, all of whom afflicted with the same shopping addiction in varying degrees of seriousness. And so this begins the diary of a mad “boxer.”
5:56am: I beat my alarm by 4 minutes but wait in bed to listen to the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy as the alarm goes off on my phone. Usually the music puts me in the holiday spirit, but this early on a Sunday morning? Bah humbug!
7:35am: I turn left on Bedford from Wilshire Boulevard to enter the parking structure at Saks Fifth Avenue. Twenty-five minutes till the doors actually open and already there are lines in front of every entrance. I clutch my steering wheel.
7:50am: It’s freezing out here as I queue up at the shortest line I could find. I should have worn those ugly but comfy shoes I wrote about earlier and jeans and a hoodie, but this morning I got into this get up instead because I have an appointment later that requires me to look, well, put together. So I’m in some theory black jeans, black longsleeved tshirt, and Chanel chain link cardigan and captoe mules.
I know, totally inappropriate for power shopping, but heck, I am standing in the middle of Beverly Hills and I even spot a few furs. It’s in the 50s right about now, and that’s basically freezing point for us Angelenos.
Did I say there is a line everywhere I look?
Let’s see what the other gals are wearing, shall we…
8:00am You know all the polite chitchat that was happening in line while we were waiting? All of it goes out the window as soon as the doors fly open, when the women rush in like ants to a piece of candy on the floor. They run, push, pull, shove, shout until they get to whatever item it is that they think they must have to avoid certain death. We are all mad, I tell myself, and some of those women can swing their elbows as effectively as any professional boxer!
I want to run in the opposite direction, but too late; I’m dragged in by the crowd’s momentum, just like on a subway train during rush hour in Tokyo.
9:05am: I’m already done scouring the 3 main floors. Pretty much everything on sale gets another 50% off (except for shoes/accessories), hence, the madness. Gucci and Chanel are excluded from the extra discount, which makes my shopping a lot shorter. I’ve already tried on about 15 items and end up with only the Marni tanks and an Alexander McQueen dress:
I think I’ll get a lot of use out of those fun Marni tanks for layering under cardigans. Here’s how it looks when I try it on later this evening:
9:30am: The shoe department at Saks looks like a disaster area and everything I pick up is not on sale. And I’m not about to stand in line for 3 hours just to pay full price, so these shoes will just go on my wish list for the Spring buys:
9:55am: I hear Banana Republic is also doing a 50% off all sales so I use my Yelp app on my phone to find it in Bev Hills. Turns out it’s just one street over from my favorite corner in this place…hmmm, wonder why :
Anyway, I find a gorgeous, long, black hand-knitted cardigan at Banana for $45. I sortof want to wear it out of the store because it’s still so cold outside!
10:30am: I’ve made it to Century City Shopping Mall to exchange a gift I got from JCrew. Surprisingly I have no trouble finding parking and I’m in and out in under 30 minutes. I pick up a taupe silk shantung embellished top ($21, I kid you not!)…
and a sherpa lined dark green jacket (not $21!) in exchange for the cardigan that was too big:
I kinda want to wear this jacket out of the store as well. It’s much too cold to enjoy this outdoors mall.
Noon: Sheer madness, I tell you, but I’ve just made it to the third mall! Luck must be on my side today because someone gives me her parking space as soon as I pull into the parking garage. I’m here to return a Chanel jacket that was sent to me in two sizes too big. Experience alone tells me that I need to stick to my true size, no matter how great of a magician my alterations lady is. But am I really only here to do a return? Mouhahahahaha.
Let the madness continue in the next entry …
Tags: Alexander McQueen, Banana Republic, Boxing Day, Chanel, Gucci, JCrew, Marni, Saks Fifth Avenue
You’ve probably heard that we had almost 7 full days of rain here in California, and for southern Cal, that’s practically as bad as 40 days and 40 nights. But in spite of the horrific mudslides in some of our hills, a full rainbow showed up at the end of the rains…
and the next day we all got into our cars and drove anywhere just because it had stopped raining!
Today, on Christmas Eve, it was such a fantastic, sunny day in Pasadena that I’m pretty certain Santa will wear a t-shirt if not shorts when he passes through here later.
I hope you get everything you wished for–maybe even something in a black box with white letters –
and if there’s still a little room in your stocking, I’m adding joy, peace, and a sunny disposition to your loot. Happy holidays everyone!
It’s a brief takeout for lunch because one person in my travel party is suffering from a bad case of food poisoning, and having been through that myself on the road a few years ago, I know it’s no fun to look at food at all. So we grab some Boudin to go…
and leave the Wharf,
just as the fog lifts to let the sun inch its way over Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge:
We make the most of the sunlight by visiting the Palace of Fine Arts next. It was constructed for an art exhibition during the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition then rebuilt in 1965, with further retrofitting done in the 2000s. Today it is a great place for weddings, events, and of course movie shoots.
Once you are here, the natural progression is to go toward the Golden Gate…I’m lucky not all the mist has burned off by the time we reach it:
So I’ll leave you here to enjoy the bridge for now and pick up on the trip after the Christmas blog. Is there anything more romantic than a suspension bridge in the mist?
Tags: Alcatraz, boudin, Golden Gate Bridge, Palace of Fine Arts, Panama Pacific Exposition
