Pun-tastic, no? It’s hard to avoid cheap literary tricks when writing about fashion! Shopping! Shoes! Cute! Exclamation points, evidently, are hard to avoid, as well.

!!!

Taking a detour off the self-help highway, I thought I’d tell you about the Gilt Group - one of the new “exclusive” newsletter/invite-only sites popping up lately. Seems that faced with the inescapable buzz surrounding portals, social communities, and all the other massive, inclusion sites, the moneyed and privileged folks in the meatspace are looking for a little online niche-space.

Gilt Group is a welcomed, practical solution for the mostly reclusive digerati who want to position themselves as style conscious if and when they ever leave the apartment. You know, people like me. If you don’t already know, the Gilt Group is an appointment-based web sale of designer clothes, shoes, jewelry, and lingerie, typically dedicated to a single brand per event. Email alerts indicate the start of a sale, with preview slide shows teasing the wares beforehand.

The first few sample sales were a joke - unless you logged on the second the sale started, you were left with extremely slim pickings in size twig or size super fatty. Even if you added a dress, a skirt, a bag to your cart, by the time you clicked to check out, the item would’ve been snatched from under you - not unlike the brutal stories of real-world sample sales. This was, assuming, you were able to log on at all: the more popular sales obviously drew a huge response rendering the site prohibitively sluggish.

Clicking like a furious-OCD crackhead, I was finally able to snag a few goodies at a stellar price. Elation! Satisfaction! HOO-HA! And then I remembered that I’d still have to wait for them to arrive via post. Blah.

Last week, like manna from heaven, my first purchases arrived via UPS. From the time I ordered, it took over two weeks for my boots and dress to show up. However, they were artfully presented with black tissue and gold sticker, as opposed to the plastic sacks of wool-blend sweaters thrown in a box I received the week before from J. Crew. In perfect condition, my dress arrived on a wooden hanger with tissue, and my boots were tucked into their sleeper bag and looked as if a human hand hadn’t touched them since they left Italy.

I haven’t bought anything from the Gilt Group since then, but I do check out the sales from time to time. Seems they’ve fixed the sluggishness and sell-out rates vary widely based on the notoriety of the brand, which is as to be expected. I can’t recommend highly enough my experience and I am looking forward to scoring more excellent finds in the future. Invites are available around the ‘net - a simple google search should get you on the list.

yours in all things super girly!

xoxo,

A

Finally, I got around to grabbing up one of those sweetly adorned, perversely messaged tees from Paris outfit, Locher’s. On sale! I pat myself on the back for my crackerjack style AND fiscal savvy.

Most excellent advice was attached to the garment’s label - never ever lend this shirt to a friend, you’ll never get it back. And it’s true! But in my case, the main culprits pilfering my stash of screened t-shirts are not my best girl friends, but rather those amorous boyflings who’ve passed in and out of my life.

Popular myth dictates that it’s the ex-girlfriend who nabs the old college sweatshirt or the broken in jeans, the favorite concert tee from high school. I’m here to tell you that’s a load of shit. At the demise of any affair, amicable or otherwise, I go out of my way to return cherished garments. Or books. A beer stein. Hell, I even dropped a CD in the mail. A CD! Like anyone even uses those anymore. But it’s important: the act of returning an item signifies my respect of this thing in his life. Even if I think he sucks.*

Items of mine that have been sacrificed to St. Anthony? Two deeply cherished t-shirts - one from a now-defunct magazine where I used to work, and one from my high school marching band. I can tell you that in both cases I earned them through months of humiliation, debasement, and suffering! And these cats just waltz out of my life, la dee da, with what amounts to my war prizes. My scalps! My pelts! I earned the right to rape & pillage that swag closet!

But that’s tip of the iceberg stuff. Other items include my great-grandmother’s china, a full-size Simmons mattress (pillow top) and box spring, a 1995 Nissan Altima, a pair of domestic short haired cats, a few toothbrushes, an earring and a few hairclips here and there.

In short - I’ve been screwed. Royally.

I can’t understand why these people would hold on to my things, my memories - for surely their memories imbued in that shirt, that book, that thing, can’t be important…or certainly not as important as it is to me. They’re things - I get that - I mean, I saw Labyrinth. Losing a t-shirt isn’t going to make me forget the humiliation and subjugation I endured as a well-paid indentured servant. I know this.

But I still think it’s shitty to hold onto something that isn’t yours.

*In all honesty, I don’t think any of them suck. After all, that would speak more about my poor taste/choices than their character flaws, and I can’t have anyone doubting my impeccable taste in music, shoes, or men.