The thrill of a bargain...

Years ago (like over 10 years ago) I tried on a Versace dress and was amazed at how beautiful it looked... on ME! I had never worn anything that nice before. It was at a Factory Outlet Center and the dress was marked down 90%, but it was still over $100, I was living in Iowa, and I couldn't see myself ever wearing it.

I saw an ad in Thursday's paper for the Barneys New York warehouse sale this weekend. A friend had gone a few years ago and got a great deal on a (originally) very expensive bag that she used to haul around her school papers. Having the time, and being a little curious about the bargains, I went to the sale.

I'm not sure if it's the economy or that fact that the sale was moved downtown (instead of in Santa Monica) this year, but it wasn't as crazy as I had heard it could be. There was no fighting and grabbing stuff away from other people at all. The main craziness was in the 'dressing area' which is basically a big curtain. About 100 women were there fighting for mirror space, undressing down to just their underwear, and some walking around bra-less looking for their friend/daughter/sister to try on the next blouse/dress/sweater/etc.

Looking through the racks, I told myself that I was only going to look at practical things-- things that I could wear to a job interview or in the work world. The mark-downs were pretty good. 60-75% off the lowest price on the tag for designer clothes and 25% off the lowest price for ready-to-wear clothes. A lot of the designer stuff was originally over $1000 and was marked-down to $300, with the final price being around $120. I ended up finding (and buying) a blue jean dress that was originally $810 with the final price being $40 after all the mark-downs. Yup I paid $40 for a $800 dress. It is a nice dress and *somebody* in this world probably paid full price for it. Though I can't imagine having so much money that I would actually pay that much money for a dress made of blue jean material. In fact, there are probably people in the Midwest that think I'm a sucker paying $40 for a blue jean dress.

The best part of the sale in L.A. is that there were a lot of clothes in my size on the racks. One girl commented that all the clothes were "soooo big". She was looking through the racks for sizes 6 and 8. Size 0 and 2 were picked clean. Hooray! One time when normal sized women win in Los Angeles!!! :)