Happy Thanksgiving (and a great Black Friday..)

Thanksgiving has been one of those American holidays I haven’t had the chance to truly celebrate despite the three years here just because I keep picturing the suburban family gathered around the table with a beautiful roasted turkey. Sometimes being in the city doesn’t quite cut it and I do miss being able to pop in and out of home to see the family (unfortch an 18-hours flight away rather than a 3-hour bus ride). And then, just as waves of the blues and nostalgia fade in, they get replaced by the promise of a lil retail therapy to cheer up any homesick girl- Black Friday…

Contrary to popular belief, I’ve never actually gone all out on Black Friday. As much as I enjoy the thrill of the hunt, shopping the day after Thanksgiving just seems like a bloodsport and I rather sit that match out thank you very much. One of my favorite sartorial moment though was 2 Black Fridays ago, which I had previously blogged about and stumbled upon its archives when cleaning up my hard drive. Enjoy:

“But on Friday…Black Friday to be exact (the day after Thanksgiving where every single store in the US of A goes on sale)..I’ve made my bestest, biggest, purchase of my shopping life…it was like the holy grail of all bargain hunts….hahha I bought my first Gucci.

Or rather, my first “Gucci”s….

J came up from Michigan for Thanksgiving so we’ve been having alot of fun this week and we decided to do serious damage on Friday at Woodbury Common. Now it seems like everyone in the world knows what Woodbury Common was except for me…so to explain: its a congregation of every designer and non-designer brand imaginable that sells their stuff below retail price..they’re factory outlets but each brand is housed in an actual house…and since they’re so many, it looks like a small suburban town except there are huge signs over the houses and they have window displays. A.k.a..it was N’s heaven…to make it worse, they blasted Christmas music through their speakers so everyone was all Xmasy and I really got into the whole mood and started picking out things for the family etc…

Anyway so I was having a pretty good day and I’ve finished my Christmas shopping for the whole family and I only managed to stick to buying one thing for myself which I really needed/wanted (I can’t tell you what it is since I bought the same thing for my sis). So I was done and I wanted to go into Gucci for the fun of it since I remember how F said the prices were really good…. Now when she said prices were really good, she meant: A US$1000 handbag would go for $799 kinda bargain… so I figured, “Oh well, let’s just go and see if I can find anything…I’ll even be happy with a keychain.”

(K, my closest friends would probably know this about me… and as you can figure out from my meeting with Tom Ford *oh wait, I didn’t blog about that in detail did I?* ..I’ve this obsession with Gucci and Tom Ford ever since I saw Zoe Tay in that Gucci dress in the music video for The Unbeatables II in 1995 (Yes, I have an amazing memory for fashion in the 90s). And yeah, like I said…if it wasn’t for the Gucci Fall 95 collection…N would be a psychologist and not doing fashion in Parsons NY- the very same school that Tom Ford graduated from. But I’ve obviously not gotten anything from Gucci cause duh..I’m not rich. And I was kinda sad when Tom Ford retired because it meant that I couldn’t get anything from his collection anymore and Gucci has never been the same since…so enough background to explain this story: moving on…)

So I was browsing around by myself, I’d to wait 7 minutes outside because there was a line to get into Gucci…it wasn’t all that crowded compared to other stores but there were obviously more people compared to the usual boutiques. So I’m checking out the bins…*hahah yes there were sales bins…* and I was surprised because they were all scarves but the tags were like “Wtf???? $300????” And I dug around the tshirts- $289, $447, $199…the cheapest thing was like a plain white tshirt for $99…. I was so despondent that I just started milling around…looking at rich Japanese women trying on $1999 coats and not wanting to leave after 2 minutes of being in the store. So I said “Screw it, let’s just look through the clothes and see what’s nice so that one day I can afford it…”

So I saw this pale pink suede pencil skirt and my first thought was “Hey this is gorgeous..” And the second thought was…”Hmmm..I’ve seen this before… hey omg, its from a Tom Ford season!” And true enough it was from Spring 2002 which probably was the year which was the epitome of Gucci’s look. Then I looked at the tag….

…and my hands turned cold and my chest tightened…

“No way..” I thought to myself…”This must be a mistake, maybe its the size..”
So I looked around me to see if anyone else noticed what had happened while clinging onto the skirt for dear life. I looked at it again, “Hmmm…it does look a lil big..but I mean, that cant’ be it” and I put it against me… it seemed to be my size. So I looked around again. Yet no other women seemed to notice what was going on and no one else was pouncing and trying to grab the skirt out of my hand. So I found a salesman and he must have spotted the mildly distressed look in my eyes… and I go:
“Excuse me, could I just ask you how much this is?”
He’s all (bright smile):”Well, you tell me how much do you want it to be?”
So I got super confused and laughed nervously because for a split second I really thought I could tell the price I want and that’s the price I get… “Well, see the tag says this but I’m just checking because maybe its the size..”
And he looked at it and said “Well that’s the price you’re gonna get it for then..”

So I nearly hugged him out of joy and died on the spot.
And I turned around to see if I can spot anymore bargains like that..
…and I spotted the same skirt in khaki.

“Omg…I can have one for play and one for work!!!” I thought to myself, grabbing it yet again and wondering what the hell the other women are doing or if they’re super blind. Granted, the skirts were hidden behind a couple of other skirts that were definitely more exhorbitant…still…

So I went to the dressing room thinking “k, even if they’re too big and fall off my waist, I am still gonna get them because I can just bloody alter it…ITS GUCCI..”

and they were perfect… the perfect pencil skirt cut I’ve ever tried on. it felt like butter wearing them, they were shapely but my ass didn’t look huge, my waist wasn’t too wide, they hid my tummy, and I had no vpls!!!

Basically they were perfect…and I started laughing to myself in the dressing room thinking that God must be really happy with me to give me such a nice surprise…I started to think it was fate and I had to like, save a village or something to give back half of the lil blessings He’d given.

So I got out of the dressing room and another saleswoman helped me out…and I asked “K, I’m getting them but I just need to check the price with you again. You’re sure its not missing a digit?”
She: “Nope, that’s how much they cost alright… plus you get an additional 25% off on all ladieswear today”
Me: “WHY IS IT SO CHEAP????”

Hahahha…brilliant right? Just when I think I’m actually becoming a very matured polished woman, I say something like that. She just laughed and said “oh its from an old season…”

I didn’t care…I wanted the old season…think about it…it’ll go up in value in the next 10 years. A vintage Hermes Birkin was auctioned off for $28,000 the other day.

Anyway so now I am the very proud owner of two Gucci suede skirts.

K so by now, you’re probably fed up with listening to me go on and on about how brilliant a buy it was and dying to know the maths…..

Like I mentioned, the scarf cost $300 and the cheapest thing I saw was $99 for a tshirt.

So here’s the original price of each skirt:

US$1720

Wanna know the price on the tag?

US$69

MUAHAHAHAHAHHAAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAH

Total cost after discount:

US$110

Cost of paying only 4% of retail price:

PRICELESS

So yup, I am a happy girl.”