By Nadine Kam

Nadine Kam photo
My reward for limiting my shopping was a little black dress
from Alice + Olivia’s Bryant Park shop, where this papier-mache chicken
was part of the decor. Before buying in New York, check the
store’s sales tax policy. Many stores do not charge the tax.
By not taking advantage of a discount fair day and not watching the
tax, I paid $100 more for the dress than I should have.

Well, back in Honolulu and time to take stock of the damage done. I was pretty grouchy after our mail was delivered and I discovered a slew of bills. Make note of that for your future travels. Try to leave mid-month, after all your basic bills have been paid. It doesn’t help that hotel Internet sites now seem to charge your card as soon as your reservation is made, rather than after you’ve completed your stay so there was no grace period on $3,000 in accommodation charges for 14 days (inexpensive by NY standards). On top of that, I’m heading to Las Vegas in October and the charges for my room at the Wynn have also already gone through.

I had done very little shopping in NY, mostly browsing … until the very last minute. I don’t know why. It’s that whole travel shopping pressure that seems to make people go on a spree once they realize their stay is winding down and it’s their last chance to pick up something before leaving town.

Nadine Kam photo
A shopper eyes the merchandise at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market.
This particular vendor dealt in fur pieces, vintage clothing, handbags and jewelry.

Last weekend I went to the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market (West 39th and 9th Ave., from 9 a.m. Saturdays and Sundays) where I bought a hat and snakeskin purse. Now I wonder why I bought the hat. It doesn’t look good on me at all. I have to blame the heat. It was close to 90 degrees that day, making it quite painful to walk around. I was so hot that day that I skipped a second opportunity to go to a Levi’s party featuring Damien Hirst. I was sorry to pass that up when it was so close, eight blocks, from where I was staying.

The second Saturday at the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market I saw more snake purses, including a blue snake clutch for about $47, but I’m fixated on the color purple. They have super quality discards in this city because shopping’s a habit and closets are small. The same clutch at Henri Bendel or Bergdorf Goodman might start, conservatively, at $800. There was another black snake disco purse that was cute, but I believe the chain had been swapped out for a much cheaper, lightweight chain that I didn’t like. Now that I think about it, I could have had that replaced it with a heavier shorter chain at home, so I’m regretting leaving that behind.

Nadine Kam photo
When I saw this line in West Village, I thought it was to
get into a Marc Jacobs sample sale. It turns out all these
people were waiting to buy cupcakes at Magnolia Bakery,
401 Bleecker at West 11th. I don’t eat cupcakes so didn’t stop,
even though this place is famous. Ditto for MJ, whose sale was further
down the street. A crowd was inside grabbing at ho-hum tote bags,
wallets and key chains.

From there, I headed to another much smaller flea market on 17th St. I had been hoping to find a pair of black booties on this trip, but I have Cinderella feet that don’t fit shoes so had pretty much given up looking. Taller boots are more forgiving because you can wear socks to fill out the space. My feet are size 3 but I found I could slip into some 5-1/2s this way and found not one, but two pairs of boots; one a camel color with a heel and one a reddish brown with a flat heel. This was not going to be good as far as packing was concerned, but I was going to worry about that later. I knew I could always wear one pair on the plane. I was worried when my suitcase wouldn’t close, but I sneaked one jacket into the bf’s suitcase, and wore two on the plane. This was fine because the weather had gotten down to 50 degrees by this time. The temperature was pleasant enough for us to have had an outdoor dinner at Nice/Matin while everyone else was sitting indoors. Some people were already in coats and scarves. I just had a light gray cropped wool jacket that I bought at the Barney’s outlet at Waikele a year ago.

Expanding my shopping search a little closer to my home base at West 73rd, I headed to Barney’s Co-op where I saw the new fall silver and gold dresses from Fighting Eel sharing floor space with the likes of Marc by Marc Jacobs. Alexander Wang and 3.1 Phillip Lim.

Nadine Kam photo
Couldn’t pass up these colorful totes at Loehmann’s.

Also close by was Loehmann’s, equivalent to Filene’s Basement. They carry overstock in some great designer lines, including Dolce & Gabbana, Giorgio Armani and Alberta Feretti — I’ve seen a lot of her stuff everywhere from Century 21 to Bloomingdale’s and have loved it all, but even discounted, her thousand-dollar pieces start at about $500, so it wasn’t meant to be.

Other lines at Loehmann’s included Theory, DKNY, Free People and Max Studio. I picked up a cute Robert Rodriguez party dress for $129. And just when I thought I was done with shopping, I had to pick up socks for my boots and wandered over to the handbag section, even though another purse is the last thing I need. For some reason I became mesmerized by the Castellari Milan pony hair totes in multi-colors, $59 to $79. I tried on every color and loved every one, from lime green to sakura pink. I really couldn’t make up my mind which color I liked best and ended up buying two, one a neon orange and the other purple. Maybe this was the purple purse I was looking for. I didn’t know whether I was going to be sorry for buying them or not, but I didn’t want to regret leaving these behind. This is the sort of impulsive thing that drives my rational half crazy. Practically, I know that all these little incidental purchases add up to a lot of money that might be better invested in one “It” bag at a later date, but I can’t deny that a bright orange bag does have a way of making me smile, and smiling can add years to one’s life I hear.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 9:46 pm and is filed under Shop. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.