No Gilt

As mentioned in my first blog entry, I looovvve those online sample sales. The excitement of a Gilt sale as the witching hour of noon approaches (the time the sale starts) is like Christmas eve if there is an event from a designer you love. Finger on the mouse, eyes glued to the screen, refresh, refresh, refresh til the site says "go to sale". The Alexis Bittar sale was almost more than I could bear. My usually quick and precise clicking went all haywire and I got a little clumsy. But I did manage to score some amazing deals on a couple of pairs of earrings I loved.

I always envision women around the world engaging in the same process. It's equivalent to the first day of Neiman's last call right before the door to the store opens. Your nose is pressed to that door like some drooling nut and the day is full of promise and amazing bargains. At the Neimans sale you run around grabbing everything you could possibly want to try on so that nobody else gets it first. I think that a lot of women would mow down anyone standing in the way to dig in (I also get a singular sense of extreme focus like no other in this scenario. Do I hear the "Bionic Woman" theme?) I really believe I've ended up with some things simply because it was the only one of a great or iconic piece (never mind that it's a totally impractical piece that doesn't exaaaacccctly fit perfectly...) and I know that other barracuda shoppers are just circling to see me put it back. There is a victory in that that only a shopaholic could possibly understand.
Well, the online sales are the same, except that your competitors are unseen. My strategy is to do pretty much what I do at a store in sale mode--scan through and put everything in my "cart" that I might in any stretch of my imagination want. In some sales the item is on hold for you for 10 minutes while you decide or shop more. I then come back to the cart and wonder what I was thinking for most of the items I had chosen. But, boy, that rush of getting them in the cart before someone else is such a triumphant feeling.

Today's Gilt was nothing to write home about for me...when it's Alexander McQueen for $995 it is just so far from my spending possibilities that it doesn't even interest me. But when it is an Alexis Bittar earring for $40? Get out of my way. I just hold my breath and hope Comcast "high speed" works for once!