Sale of the Century AKA I'll step on your neck

Hello internet,

12 days without updates...scandal. Whilst some veteran bloggers might advise that taking a near two week hiatus might effectively purge your blog of readership, (especially when you're only a few months in to begin with and hardly doing fantastic numbers,)that this course of action *might* be a foolish idea, I personally think it proves our hard-edged high fashion fearlessness. Plus, it's Christmas, innit? Baby JC didn't show his infant face so I could blather on about invisible g-strings over his birthday. It wasn't Gold, Frankincense and a Marc by Marc Jacobs accessory wall, was it? Was it? I've forgotten how that carol goes.

If you've kept the faith and kept checking the site, well done. A big pair of shoulder pads and my undying gratitude for you. Now onto the Marc Jacobs.....

Who Are We? The Infinite Fury of the British Sale Shopper
Susie Bubble, our infintely more popular and thus our West Side Story-style rival (I imagine one day we'll settle our differences with jazz ballet) recently blogged about the Boxing Day sales, being as that they were the busiest day in British retail history. People were actually hospitalised as they queued and spewed outside Next, desperate for bargains galore.

Burn, Chelmsford, burn!

Susie sez:
Let me get this straight... All of this grief.... for NEXT?!? I'm really not sure what it says on a whole about the British shopping nation that people are willing to stress themselves out over the possibility of picking up some shoddy cut trousers, coats that won't last and shoes that are made of pleather. I feel that people aren't really weighing it up in their heads properly when getting shopping happy. A guy loading up on cheapie £12 dress shirts (i.e. shirts intended for the office) could have bagged a wonderfully cut, beautifully shirt from Givenchy at £59. The number of wears you get out of aforementioned Next shirt = 12....The number of times you get out of Givenchy shirt = 72+.

Using the Stylebubble logic, Fashion maths tells us that:

5 x Next shirts=1 Givenchy shirt.

Wear of Next Shirts combined = 5 x 12 = 60

Wear of Givenchy shirt = 72+

Not at alot in it, is there? I also think Susie Bubble is being hugely conservative in her estimate of how long Next shirts last. I can tell you a little about the man who shops in Next: he doesn't know/give a shit about Givenchy. He cares about having enough shirts to get through the working week without doing any laundry. 1 fancy shirt a week would require craploads of laundering and care. In fact, if we conservatively estimate that the average working Joe goes into the office for 48 weeks a year and that those Next shirts he wears are bunged in the wash on weekends only, we've got 48 wears per shirt before the next Blow-Out Next sale happens next Christmas. Lightly worn high street'll last a year, easily. It ain't fashion, it's economy and as glorious as they are, Givenchy can bite the Next shopper's balls.

With regards to women, I know my mother and her friends ADORE Next: generous sizing, nods to trends without being 'fashion', smart, conservative workwear that simply in't offered anywhere other than M&S which is now pitching itself towards the trend influenced fashion savvy consumer anyway. It's also, I think an esteem based issue. A lot of women see spending out £50+ on one item for themsleves as a moral lapse comparable to punching an elderly man full in the face. They don't see themselves as 'designer women' and even if they did spend £80 on a Next coat, they couldn't conceive of paying out £77.50 (down from £155) for a Miu Miu day dress that they could style a million ways for the office or for casual:

It looks like nothing but would feel and look amazing. My ma would look aces in this.

Like a queen.

People don't think they have access to Miu Miu. That's why they get up at 5am and wait outside the malls, waiting to elbow their rivals in the trachea in order to get first dibs on the sparkly viscose.

Speaking of shallow people storming the barriers of retail, my friend Alice and I braved the Harrods and Selfridges sale. Friends, I touched a Giles Deacon gown. I almost urinated myself when I saw last season's felted wool Miu Miu. It was such a fashion nerd red letter day. I have literally never been near any of the high end stuff I blather about and so to touch, to try on the right side of these Dior shoes:

£400, down from £1,000? Totally, totally reasonable in that moment (and, if I'm honest, right now). I was origami drag queen of the future and I deserved to be 6'1'' forever. Evidently, I didn't look that expensive because the Dior shoelady didn't ask me if I wanted the left one. So, in my sweat soaked Next sock on one foot and demi couture on the other, I tippy toed around the showroom and it was the most gloriously prozac-ky I have felt in a long time.Not so with Christian Louboutins. I tried on three separate and am unhappy to confirm that Sex and City has lied to us all again. The Louboutons weren't sex-soaked leather erotica dream objects but rather Vietnam for the feet. Ow. Ow. Ow.

The most glorious fun for both me and Alice was the Marc byMarc Jacobs section in Selfridges. We delved into the changing rooms with pure hearts and true and Alice even got a £50 spotty yello bargain. God bless her - she deserves it all. I was content to pose and preen in their changing room:

Go on, drink in my happiness. Of course, once you've stroked Jonathan Saunders, Giles Deacon and Nina Ricci, going to Topshop, even thre fancy Oxford Street one is a comedown. Arriving on the Lower Ground floor to be greeted with a sea of poly-cotton tops and Kate Moss leftovers, all wanting at least £30 is quite the system shock. I turned to Alice and said with the coldest fury: what IS this shit? Mecca turned to M'eh in one designer trip.

Happy 2008. Feed me Miu Miu.

Love,

B.