Sample Sale Bonanza Day 3 – Marc Jacobs
December 14, 2008
So after downloading our new favourite iPhone App “5800+ Cocktail Recipes”, and a night of experimenting exotic takes on Vodka, we woke up kinda late for Marc Jacobs the next day. In fact, rumor had it folks were standing outside the 146 Mercer store from as early as 7am, with the queue bending around the Mercer hotel by 8:30am. With the doors opening at 10am, famished fashionistas feasted on grogeous MJ bags. And with prices hovering only from $50-$300 for high end leather bags, even the street counterfeit sellers had to go into the store and snag what they could.
Corner of Houston and 6th
As our Twitter feed shows, we got there by 5pm and queued up as far as back of the Mercer hotel. We made good conversation with the ladies on line, who were all but nervous that there wouldn’t be anything left by the time they got in. From a peek through the store window, we spotted piles of bags along the middle aisle when we walked by and knew there would be more than enough to go around. After a 1 hour wait, our toes were colder than Stylistas TV ratings, but that happily changed upon walking through the boutique’s brick lined doors.
Marc Jacobs Mercer Street Queue
But what greeted us inside was everything save magical – in fact, it was like a retake on the Le SportSac madness, except the girls were a lot taller and they came prepared for a fight. With cluttered boxes of mismatched shoes everywhere, bags piled on top of bags spilling out onto the floor, the MJ boutique looked like another poorly planned FEMA project. The staff valiantly tried to meet the enormous queue of buyers, swiping credit cards in a flurry, just to get as many buyers out as more came in.
Fistfight for anything MJ
We took a deep breathe, turned our rings around, took off our earrings, hiked up our skirts and dove into the pandemonium elbow first. Immediately, we knew we were leaving MJ with at least two things: bags and shoes. To that, we immediately snagged a couple lovely Silver ruby-eyed frog pochette purses in every colour under the Fall rainbow: navy blue, black, and ivory.
 Mountain of discounted MJ bags |
 Mismatched MJ shoe boxes |
Next we snatched up the same pochette but in clutch format, sans strap and in black. Whilst looking for shoes, we were torn between a black laced ballerina and a smooth lavender satin bow flat. The latter won, since it seemed to go best with our Alexander Wang cashmere knit.
With these savings, we even felt compelled to get something for the special guys in our life. A last pair of 90% discounted brown suede sneakers in 9.5′s meant we couldn’t pass them up.
The damage: $100 pochette (x3 @$300), $50 clutch, $60 flats, $26 men’s sneakers.
Grand total: $476, tax included!
After quickly checking our receipts to make sure there wasn’t some catch to this sale, we still buzzed from the shockingly awesome deals we were able to come away with. Every other store we visited afterwards was just the after-shopping orgasm to our MJ climax. We especially took pleasure in having sales reps in other stores ask us if we went to the MJ sample sale. To that, I simply swiveled around to show my huge white Marc Jacobs shopping bag and smiled.
Erin Wasson Cuts Loose From Wang, Launches…Herself
August 7, 2008
Next up on the roster of catwalkers turning to other careers: Erin Wasson.
The model-stylist-skating enthusiast has added clothing designer to her résumé, hammering out a three-year deal to design Erin Wasson for Rvca, the spring 2009 collection of which has been snapped up by Opening Ceremony.
It was, fittingly, at the beach that Wasson first came onto the radar of Rvca founder and pooh-bah of all things Orange County — that would be surfing, skating and tagging — Pat “PM” Tenore. Two years ago, Tenore’s teenage son was participating in a shoot for Australian Vogue at Bondi Beach, where Wasson was the hired model and the main attraction. “He came home and said, ‘Dad, I met the raddest girl!’” says Tenore, who founded the surf- and skate-inspired clothing company out of his Costa Mesa, Calif., garage nearly seven years ago. “I had met her at Rvca parties, so I called her up to see what she was working on, and she had all these amazing ideas. She has a very strong view on what she likes, and she’s a natural at design.”
Amid fashion circles, beyond gracing campaigns from H&M to Balenciaga, Wasson, 26, is perhaps best known for her collaboration with Alexander Wang, whose last two shows she styled and for whom she has served as a sort of in-house muse (Wasson met Wang when he moved into an apartment two floors below hers in Manhattan’s East Village). “Tomboy chic” is what Wasson deems their shared aesthetic — scrawny tanks, lots of denim. “We have the same thought about what a girl should look like,” she says. “Strong girls who are really confident.” Wasson’s jewelry line, Low Luv, was also featured in Wang’s fall 2008 show, though she recently came under fire in the blogosphere for the line’s similarities to designer Bliss Lau’s body chains. “I have the utmost respect for Bliss Lau,” says Wasson. “I admire and appreciate what she has done for the jewelry industry.”
Though they remain good friends, Wasson and Wang are no longer professionally tied, which has freed her to craft a collection that pretty much mirrors her daily uniform and will most likely speak to exactly the kind of woman Wasson is: active and unafraid to show a little skin. For spring, there are Pima cotton tank tops and denim cutoffs, a wool miniskirt and a silk button-down emblazoned with tiny thunderbolts, even a jaunty blazer with an unexpected zipper running up the back.
“I think the problem with surf and skate companies is that the girls’ stuff tends to be a lot of pinks and blues, and [they] just assume that that’s what girls want to wear,” says Wasson. “So I’d buy from the men’s section in the skate shops.”
To be sure, there are no girlish pinks or baby blues in Wasson’s line; the blacks, grays, and whites are hues you’d find upon opening Wasson’s own closet doors (she recalls that as a child growing up in Irving, Tex., her mother “fought to get me into a dress”). A flowered shift is the only piece that could be considered truly feminine (Wasson says she’d toughen it up with combat boots or Vans), though there’s no shortage of sex appeal. The tanks, which retail for $55, are cut low, and the frayed denim shorts, $230, skim the upper thigh.
No doubt the photo-shoot set will find Wasson’s wares perfect additions to a wardrobe suited for nights at the Beatrice Inn, but that was the last thing on the model’s mind when she and Tenore joined forces. “I’m going to get my rocks off seeing girls in California skating around wearing my clothes more than I think I will seeing it in the fashion world,” admits Wasson. All of this is not to say, however, that her posing days are anywhere over. “Oh, no, honey,” she says with a laugh. “You don’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
