Sample Sale Bonanza Day 3 – Marc Jacobs

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.

Sample Sales Bonanza Day 2 – Alexander Wang, Rag and Bone

With our biweekly Thursday check cashed, Friday seemed like a perfect day to do even more damage. Hopping on R train to Canal and Broadway, we scurried to one of our most sought after sample sales yet: Alexander Wang. With over 40-70% off, the CFDA Vogue Designer of the year’s sample sale was like sweet Chocolate Pirouline in our coffee.

Alexander Wang Sales Floor

We took the elevator to the 6th floor, stopping by the 3rd floor to checkout Wang’s uber chic main headquarters, decked out in large orchid florals, mahogany floors and black Niemeyer chairs. On the 6th fl, post coatcheck, we were immediately mesmorized by a rack full of pastel toned cashmere knits, in baby yellows, peach, beige, and black. But what really took us aback was the awesome pricetag: $40! You can’t even get the same knit for that price at the Banana Repulic. We didn’t think twice, grabbed our size and quickly moved on to the next rack, hopping the pricetag wasn’t some staff error.

Cashmere Knits

Segueing to the front, we pulled a cute dark violet silk sleeveles top with a gold chained collar that was only $160 from a previous $600. Another great find was the adorable beige short ruffle sleeve jacket that went great with the top. Decisions, decisions…

Violet sleeveless top with gold chain collar

Beige Short Jacket

Since it was cash only under $200, we decided to go minimalist on the spending, opting for the cashmere knit. A quick roundtrip to Bank of America on Canal St. for some cash and we were out of Wangs by 7pm.

With only 1 hour to spare, we hopped back on the R uptown, got off at Union Square and headed toward 10th Ave & 13th on foot, to Rag and Bone’s own sample sale. After ariving at the door, we had a hard time with the intercom until another R&B shopper figured out that the #17 button was for the 6th floor sales dept (I still don’t know how he figured that out). Upon opening the door, we were severely disspointed Rag and Bone couldn’t choose a locale that had, oh I don’t know, a ground floor space or perhaps an elevator…. After schleping up a Mayan temple flight of stairs, we finally got up to the sales floor.

Rag and Bone Sales Racks

With only 20 mins left to go before closing, and with assembly line consistency, we touched and tugged at pants, ponchos, tops and coats, looking for anything that complimented our Wang & Erin Wasson street chic look. While there were a few cute pieces, namely a cashmere poncho and few ragged tops, the men’s collection seemed the better deal with coats selling for as low as $75. We held off on the $240 poncho and decided to save our pennies until Saturdays mother of all sales – Marc Jacobs.

Sample Sale Bonanza Day 1 – Furla, Le SportSac, and Catherine Malandrino

This week’s sample sale had thrifty buyers running out and pushing elbows on the clothing racks. While it may have seemed that this economy tempered the charge card consumerism of yore, buyers were seduced by some notable luxury brands slashing their prices up to 90% off retail.

Indeed, buyers not content with $0.99 Xmas shopping at Crazy Jacks were treated to deals at Furla, Le SportSac, Alexander Wang, Rag and Bone, and even Marc Jacobs to name a few. (And I’m talking about MJ’s high-end boutique, not the more ‘cheapo’ Marc by Marc Jacobs line).

Table full of Furla bags

As you might have spied on our Twitter feed, we started off the sample sales bonanza shopping Wednesday 9am sharp at the Furla sale on 552 Broadway. We spotted a few bags that were worth prying open our creaky coin purse, namely a gorgeous Black Pony Hair Purse for $375 from $700. Pricey, but we justified it because you can reverse the bag and have a purely gorgeous leather bag too. Two bags for the price of one, how is that not a deal?

Black Pony Hair & Leather Pochette

We then took off to the Tracey Reese sample sale around the corner on 40th street. Not much was going on instore but maybe because it was only 10am and most folks were still getting their morning coffee. By the way, when you see a line at the mobile coffee stand and no one at Starbucks during morning rush hour, you know there’s a recession.

Le Sport Sac Sample Sale Sign

We then hopped into a cab on Broadway and headed to the Le Sport Sac sample sale on 18th street between 7-8th Aves. With no line outside at 11am, we headed upstairs and found nothing short of a knife fight for a ridiculous number of Tokodoki bags. Mayhem could not begin to describe the tenacity of these women as they clawed and snatched up as many Tokidoki bags as the crux of their arms could hold. Many queued up to checkout with 10 bags to an arm, this despite the fact that there were thousands of Le Sport Sac nylon bags to go around. We left shortly after arriving, unable to comprehend how the Stella McCartney for Le SportSac luggage bags were totally ignored but grabbing any Tokidoki Fannypack meant a back-alley fight with a short tempered Asian lady.

Tokidoki Mayhem

Belthaus Sales Floor

Belthaus was located next door in the ground floor glass panelled Altman Building space. Wide, spacious, wood parquet floors with racks of clothing, bags and shoes from Givenchy, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen made for an awesome sample sale shopping experience. Oddly it was kinda empty inside which I think scared the staff into ratcheting up the sales from 40% to a whopping 70% off in the ten minutes since we got there. Another sign that this is a buyers market.

Couture for a couple of coins

Givenchy Pumps

After perusing through the well displayed shoe and bag collection, we fell in love with a pair of wine colored ballerinas with golden skull tassles by Alexander McQueen, priced at a reasonable $175 from a former $575 pricetag. Once we put them on, we felt whisked away to the fashion land of Oz – full of flying anoerixoc models, Mario “Tinman” Testino, Lagerfeld “the Lion”, and Wicked Wintouress herself.

McQueen Skulls and Wine Flats

As we headed out of Belthaus, we popped our heads into Malandrino’s sample sale next door. Not much was to be desired as the prices looked damn close to retail. We figured another day or a couple of hours might compell the sales reps to make like Belthaus and jack the discounts up another +30%.

Malandrino Price List

Sales from other fashion houses were all over 18th street but alas our wallets were as empty as a Kathy Griffin book signing so we hauled our finds back home until the next round of sample sales on Friday.