Sale Of The Century...

*WARNING: THIS IS AN EXTREMELY LONG POST…*

If you have been hiding out in a cave for the past week, then perhaps you didn’t know that last week Saks had a BLOWOUT SALE. By BLOWOUT I mean, 40% plus another 50% on shoes and handbags. Yea I know. There was a lot of speculation as to why Saks decided to mark down designer goodies so drastically and while I’m not sure what the “official” reason is, I’m just damn glad they decided to do it. While Saks never publicly announced the sale, word leaked from a few of the SAs who alerted their best customers who went ahead and alerted their best friends, who went ahead and alerted their best friends, and so on and so forth. How did I find out about it??

Around 5pm Wednesday (11/19/08), I was driving home from work when I got a call from DZ. She explained she had stopped by Saks after work and was completely shocked to find the shoe department in complete mayhem. She told me shoes were everywhere and that I basically needed to get my ass there ASAP. I zipped through LA traffic and got to Saks at around 5:15pm. The shoe department was an absolute mess. Shoes were lying everywhere, nothing was left on the shelves or display tables, empty shoe boxes lay abandoned on the floor, and there were hundreds of women trying to find/try on/buy shoes. There was hardly room to walk and all the SAs were ready to pull their hair out as they tried to do 20 things at once. I realized that it was going to be extremely hard to find a pair of shoes (not only were all the good shoes gone, none of the SAs were even to help you because they were busy helping out 10 other customers…) and so I wandered into the handbag department. I talked to one of the SAs there and she said that handbags start on Thursday but she was willing to pull anything that I was interested in off the shelves so that I could get a head start. With sucha good deal and sucha accommodating SA, I went ahead and got the YSL Majorelle bag in fuchsia. When I went back to find DZ in the shoe department, she had managed to find a pair of Louboutin Scissor pumps in purple suede. Since she had the box and the matching pair, she was one of the lucky few who managed to score shoes before the store closed. When I asked the SA who was helping her how much the shoes would come out to be, he said probably around $200ish. Yea, I KNOW…I practically fainted. We made plans to come back the next morning cus the sale was just too good to pass up…

DZ and I got to Saks Thursday (11/20/08) morning about 40 minutes before the store opened. There were already a few women lined up at the doors and by 9:45am, a whole crowd had congregated outside the door. I was getting irritated at the women who were in front of us because what had started out as 2 girls had turned into a flock of 20+ people. Whatevs. When the doors finally opened, I was surprised that no one was running. I did my best speed-walk and got to the Louboutin table as fast as my little legs would carry me. Once there, I just started to grab any shoe that looked decent. Unlike the other shoppers, I wasn’t picky about the sizes cus I knew I could always just ask the SAs to check if other sizes were available. By the time I was done searching for shoes, DZ and I literally had our arms FULL of Louboutin shoes. I can’t even begin to tell you the dirty looks we were getting from everyone else. Sorry but you snooze, you lose! We quickly took our pile of shoes to a deserted part of the floor and begin to separate out which shoes needed bigger sizes, which needed smaller sizes, and which were good as is. During this whole time, there were SO many women walking by trying to grab any shoe that we happened to toss aside and we got a lot of “Are those ALL yours?!” and “Are those ALL your sizes?!” to which we replied “YES and YES!”. When we were finally ready, we took a deep breath and headed back towards the crowd and started looking for any available SAs. We got EXTREMELY lucky. I was able to snatch a guy who worked exclusively with us until we had all the shoes that was in our pile. He refused to help anyone else and patiently went back and forth looking for each shoe in the size that we asked him for. Again, our growing mountain of Louboutin shoe boxes got attention from all the other shoppers who either gave us dirty looks or looks of complete awe. Finally after we had all the matching pairs, we went back to our deserted area and began to try on all the shoes and after about an hour of first stepping into the sale, we were ready to pay and get the F*CK out of the madhouse. In short…DZ AND I KICKED ASS. We executed our plan PERFECTLY and was the envy of all the other women vying for shoes that day. We took a quick peek at the handbag department and it wasn’t much better. Almost all of the bags were gone and women were walking around with 4-5 bags around their shoulders. I was happy with what we had gotten at the shoe department and decided enough was enough.

Friday 11/21/08: Rumor had it that Chanel was going to be on sale and by all accounts, Friday was even crazier than Thursday. DZ went at around noon and wasn’t even able to find parking. She said Chanel was insane and there were reports of fights breaking out!!!! I’m not sure why people were gathered in the Chanel boutique because by all accounts, everything was gone in less than 30 seconds…

Saturday 11/22/08: Since I had to go to Beverly Hills that morning to pick up my Bottega special order, I decided to stop by Saks with DZ in the morning. We arrived around 9:30 am and there was already a decent sized crowd waiting outside. When the doors opened, there was plenty of pushing and shoving. Most of everything was sold out but the line for matching pairs went out the door. As for the handbags…THERE WAS NONE. Absolutely nada. The Chanel boutique, the Gucci boutique, and the main handbags department were completely empty. All the on-sale handbags were already sold out and due to disrespectful bargain shoppers, Saks had decided to pull all of the full price handbags off the shelves as well. DZ and I stayed for about 15 mins since we figured we had already gotten great pieces for great prices.

Monday, 11/24/08: My SA was nice enough to call me to give me an update on the sale. She said she can’t even begin to explain how crazy its been. At the moment they were sorting the pre-sales by last names. She assured me that my stuff was safe and advised that if possible, it would be best to wait until next week to pick up my items. She said Tuesday was for sure going to be complete chaos. As much as I appreciated her call, I knew that I just HAD to go on Tuesday. I was almost dying from paranoia and anticipation. There were so many stories going around about how people were losing their pre-sale items. I just couldn’t wait any longer and plus, I really didn’t want to risk losing my stuff.

Finally today, Tuesday 11/25/08, we were able to pick up our loot from the INSANE pre-sale. DZ and I got to Saks around 9:30 am and of course, there was already a line outside. Just before the doors opened, one of the managers came out and promptly told us that there were no more shoes or handbags on sale and for people picking up pre-sales, we had to stop by the designated tables. And so we went in. *Sigh* How can I even begin to describe the experience?? I was about to start throwing punches out of claustrophobia and frustration. The retarded people at Saks thought it was a good idea to put the table for shoes right at the entrance. Basically if there had been an earthquake or fire, we would’ve all been trampled to death. Second of all, they designated TWO people to help FIVE HUNDRED eager women. WTF?!?!?!?!?! Why couldn’t they have placed the table farther down the floor and given us at least some breathing room?! Why couldn’t they have scattered more tables across the entire floor?? Why couldn’t they have had more people helping ALL OF US?? Anyhow…basically DZ and I lucked out once again since we were towards the front of the line. When you get to the table, you tell the lady (who by the way couldn’t even correctly record names down…) your last name, how many pairs of shoes you got, and how you paid. She then hands over the slip of paper with your info on it to one of the many hired runners. The runners go down to the basement to locate your stuff and to finally bring you the items that you fought long and hard for. It was the same deal in the handbags department.

As I write this, I can’t believe JUST HOW MUCH ENERGY AND TIME I put into this sale. Like seriously, this was crazier than anything you could ever imagine. While I love everything I bought, I have to say I was disappointed at how disorganized this whole sale was. I guess I can’t really blame the SAs because they were caught off guard themselves. I actually really feel for them. My SA was sweating up a storm when I went to speak to her after all the chaos. The sale was a final sale but a lot of people didn’t know that. Sucks for them cus they were just buying and grabbing whatever they could get their hands on because they figured they could just return it…I guess theres always eBay : P A lot of the handbags also didn’t come with dust bags. There was just too much going on for the SAs to worry about finding matching dust bags for all the bags. However, it really irked me that my Majorelle would be sitting “naked” in my closet and so I found my SA and asked her for a dust bag. She was nice enough to find a Bottega dust bag for me…hey, its better than nothing!! She also made sure that the sensor was taken off of my bag. I’ll definitely be going back to her for all of my Saks purchases from now on. All in all…this was the sale of the century and I’m SO glad I got what I got and that its OVER. After going to Saks every damn day for a week straight, I don’t plan on going back there for awhile. I think I’ve got the whole floor plan of that place memorized…

My regrets? While overall, I think I excelled during this sale, I do regret not buying the YSL Tribute and Bottega clutch on Wednesday when I had the chance. Oh well…

And finally…some pics of this whole crazy experience:

This is what the shoe department looked liked Saturday morning...if you look closely, you see the screens at the very back of the picture. Behind the screens is where they kept all of the pre-sales that were sold using Saks card only. The space that those pre-sales and screens took up added to the claustrophobia that we faced Tuesday morning...

The above two pics were what the main floor handbags department looked like. There was ABSOLUTELY NOTHING THERE...it was as if Saks was closing...

The Chanel boutique was also completely empty and blocked off.

Happy group pic of my loot from the sale. The above picture represents a weeks work of energy, time, stress, anticipation, paranoia, excitement, etc

YSL Majorelle

No Prive in burgundy glittart

Ron Ron (100) in brown glittart

Scissor pumps in gray suede

New Simples in patent teal

I know this post probably wins the award for longest post ever but seriously after all that, I still dont think I can correctly impart on you what exactly it was like to go through this sale...INSANE I tell you, ABSOLUTELY INSANE...