Sample Sales---Full Time Job

I was told by a good friend, who shares in the joys of shopping, that New York is the mecca of the Sample Sale. Most of us forget the entire American fashion industry is, for the most part, centered in this city, namely between 36th and 30th. It makes sense all these designers would sell their wares at prices just above wholesale before shipping off the leftovers to the discount designer stores where patience is a must when shopping.

Since coming to the city, I've combed the New York Magazine for upcoming sales, imaging all the beautiful items to hang in my teeny closet. Shopping, for most women, is an activity that seems to release a special endorphin of pleasure. I know so few women who claim, notice the use of the word claim, to not enjoy shopping. When they make such a claim, they might mean they don't draw pleasure in shopping for clothes, shoes, bags, but instead spend their time shopping for the many other items that are purchasable. So, to claim they didn't get the same high from an outing to Target as some of us experience at Bergdorf's is a false claim, indeed. The same act of selecting, your imagination heightened as you picture, said, item in your cabinet or on your body, and then handing over credit card, ATM card, or cash for the item is all the same. The same hormones get released whether you've just purchased the perfect Chanel bag or a bunch of household items at Target.

For me, and some of my friends, shopping is more sport than anything else. There is an element of the endurance training involved in becoming an expert shopper. I was, even in LA, a fast, expert shopper. I would trod off to sales, collecting bargains as expertly as finding the shoe of the season, which I would buy at full price. To be an expert shopper is to know when some things will go on sale and when certain items will not, thereby enabling you to make decisions prudently. Lord knows what a crisis it is when you've been eying a pair of perfect sumptuous pumps, only to find your size is gone because you'd deliberated just a tad too long. That, of course, would mean hours spent scouring websites, of which there are so many now, rooting out these perfect shoes.

I thought sales, like Neiman's First Call and Ron Herman's, were top notch. But since being in New York, I've now realized what I'd been missing out on. Sample Sales are a whole subcategory of sales and shopping. I've now attended four such sales, each one more surprising in what was available at discount prices. The perception that such sales are attended only by those who can't afford these designer goods at full prices is what is most delightful about all of this. Each time I arrive at a sale, finding the line of women snaking its way around a city block, I notice how each woman is someone who can afford to go to Barney's or Bergdorf's and hand over their Platinum card for whatever their heart desires. Each woman is perfectly coiffed--a whole blog could be devoted to the art of dressing in this city--from head to toe, a beautiful hand bag slung over their shoulder, their cell phone pressed to their ear as they give their girlfriend a run down of what the scene looks like, all ravenous in their pursuit of a bargain.

Once you enter the sale, you see racks and racks of clothing, no different than what's available at any of the top notch department stores. It is as if you've entered Bergdorf's 5th Floor without the music, the solicitous sales help, the mannequins styled just so. It is just clothes on metal racks. After a few of these sales, I've become expert in figuring out how to maneuver it all to maximize my time.

It is as you lug your findings in the nondescript black plastic bag that the endorphin settles in your brain, shutting out all the realities of sires wailing and the crush of people on the city streets. I've now come to accept it is as much about the hopefulness of each purchase that brings me such pleasure. Each new item is a signal to events attended, dinner dates out with your husband, lunches with girlfriends, an outing the excuse to play dress up, hoping to transform your every day blahness to something memorable. Sometimes for me, making that extra effort makes me reconnect to the woman I was before I became a mother when my life was full of so much expectation. Whatever the reasons, like most of my female peers, the art of getting dressed is something that becomes another aspect of the expression of self. A scarf tied just so can make another woman eye your efforts appreciatively. That is the way of the world of women, something my husband finds baffling. So, onward and upward as more designers put out notices for their sample sales, and I fit in an hour or two out of my work day to stand in line along with all the others, each of us searching for that intangible thing that will transform us into swans. Or simply a great deal on a cashmere sweater or designer handbag.