Seriously, I’m not sure how this story got leaked – don’t panic – it happened in the US – but it’s had me giggling all day. Everyone knows that behind the scenes in fash/beauty land, a ticket to a press sample sale is one hot ticket indeed. Neither industry pays well, so it’s a perk of the job that sometimes you get invited to sample sales to buy the products at a fraction of the price.
So, this poor editor, having queued for goodness knows how long to get the shoes of her dreams got overtaken in line by queue bargers. We’re British – we know that is one of the biggest social sins that can be committed. And, she basically lost her sh*t – well and truly lost it. 100% melt-down. I hear ya, sister. A mile of molehills and it took a queue jumper to turn it into a Vesuvius sized explosion. We’ve all been there. To make matters worse still, while things were getting seriously heated – in every sense – the staff at the sale refused to open any windows in case the line of editors had friends waiting on the street below to catch any shoes being secretly thrown out of the window.
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You couldn’t make it up! I’ve queued in my life for two sample sales – Burberry and Chanel. Burberry was just a crazy crush but I was really happy with my purchases. Chanel sample sales used to be held in the ballroom of a swish London hotel and the line was round the corner – with plenty of queue jumpers I might add with friends ‘holding places’. But because we’re British we sort of internalised our rage by swishing newspapers or pressing the phone pad extra hard.
Once inside, there was a list of prices and you were only allowed to buy a set number of certain items – only one bag, for example. Needless to say, unseemly scrums round the bag table but there were always plenty of bags. However, it was one rule for one and any rules for others – the higher up the beauty/fashion food chain, the more the rules could be bent. So, the one bag rule didn’t apply if you asked for more and were influential enough to get away with it. I only went three times – but by the second time I’d learned that cash is king and took extra amounts of ready money so that anyone who wasn’t buying a bag could ‘smuggle’ one out. A lot of this furtive bag dealing took place. I’ll add in that in the time that I went and now I don’t think there is a single person from the original team back then, so nobody’s being dropped in it. And, I don’t get to go now – if they even still exist.
But I do think the thought of not allowing an open window incase an unruly journalist tried to throw boucle bounty out to the street below would make them all reel in horror.
So, New York sample salers are clearly one step ahead of us with tactics – and a million times braver in queue ethics. I just truly hope that the editor in question found a pair of Blahniks in her size.
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