Sample sale sorrow

Today, after attending a lovely event at the Buckingham Hotel penthouse suite, I was in fabulous spirits. It was a beautiful day, my arms were weighed down with fun house-adorning swag, all was fine with the world.

And then I remembered that this week was the Betsey Johnson sample sale, and my glee got just a little bit more gigantic.

I love Betsey Johnson - her style embodies a lot of my most valued fashion themes - and her samples sales are famous for being insane. (As in $400 dresses slashed to well under $100.) While I don’t necessarily *need* anything, I do have a ton of pretty posh events coming up. Any purchases I made would thus not be a splurge, but an investment in my future, and quite frankly, a reflection on my brand’s image. It could, in effect, change the scope of my entire career.

How sad thus the outcome was to be.

The sample sale was held in a large conference room at a midtown hotel, and even in the normally quite post-lunch mid-afternoon hours, was a packed madhouse of trend-hungry post-teeny-boppers. Those of you who frequent the Barney’s Warehouse Sale may be familiar with the scene: As there were no dressing rooms, women would crowd in corners shielding themselves with the bodies of friends, ripping off their clothes in order to try on just about anything they could find in (or close to) their size. In such an environment, we can’t help but return to our animal kingdom roots, and it’s very much an exercise of survival of the fittest.

Any man (or non-shopping-wise) woman who walked into this scene might be somewhat frightened…immediately it will become apparent to even the most casual of observers that there are some who are not practiced in the procedures. Said members of the kingdom are the ones who do not survive, will likely be pushed and shoved aside, and should they even find any items in their size, will likely have it ripped away from them in a fit of shopping frenzy. If they even get that far — these are also the girls that aren’t savvy enough to wear appropriate communal changing attire: Ladies, if you are going to be stripping down in front of strangers, don’t wear thongs or see-thru/crotchless panties, no one wants to see your butt, no matter how little cottage cheese it may have. And the same goes for see-thru bras. Unless you are trying to woo the security into creating a secret Betsey stash for you, (and it likely won’t work…they are INTENSE), there’s a time and a place. Got it?

Same goes for you all who go braless…I mean, I’m all for those commando days, but seriously….sheesh.

As soon as I had entered the room, I fell in love with a black and pink mesh cocktail dress with a hot pink sash across the bodice ($400 marked down to $35!). Even more exciting, they had one left in a size 0!

I followed the lead of the nearby masses, pulling my own little black dress over my head, and tossing it aside to try on my soon-to-be-new dress. And it didn’t zip! I thought back to the dessert I had with lunch, sighed in regret, and tried on the 2. That did not fit either! All around me, I saw other girls slip dresses right on…no sighing, no tears.

My glorious day officially sucked.

There’s nothing like absolute failure at the sale of all sales to make you question the very nature of your femininity. And while I was ready to throw all the chocolate from my fridge, I must reflect…all my current clothes do still fit, so my ass couldn’t have widened that much. Sample sales = mis-sized = misery waiting to happen. Still, I sort of wonder if those braless girls had a point after all…it does leave more room for that zipper…

Sigh. I am pretty sure I am sooo done with chocolate anyway. And, sadly, my soon-to-be-perfect dress.