Tales of Love, Loss and Regret

Wednesday: tan Louboutin mules

As any power shopper knows, buyer’s remorse works both ways: It can manifest itself as the quiet desperation over a lost opportunity, or, alternately, the cold-sweats-and-shakes agony of the sticker shock once the credit card bill comes. It’s about both the things that you didn’t buy (like two ships that passed in the night…) and the stuff you wish you had never laid eyes on and carried over to the cash register.
Here are my best/worst stories.

1. When I was about 14 and still living in Texas, I went shopping with my big sister and agonized over whether to buy this Esprit white cotton shirt with fancy flower buttons. My sister, who has always been and still is my most powerful enabler, told me I should just get it if I liked it. After all, she pointed out, you can never have too many white shirts. Or black shoes. Or diamonds. (Our mother taught us well.) But I wavered, and I walked away. Of course, the minute I got home I wanted it — bad. And I was never able to find it again. For weeks (okay, full disclosure: years) I had dreams about that shirt… those buttons… I still pine for it sometimes. I may well have spent the past two decades overcompensating for that loss.
2. When I first moved to New York after college, I used to get up even before the garbage truck made its rounds, to go to the Barneys warehouse sale on the first day. Rain or shine, I’d be one of the diehards in line before the doors opened. The first sale, I bought pea-green linen blend sweater, just because it was marked down 75% to, oh, I don’t know, $400? It’s probably still hanging, tags on, in my closet somewhere.
3. I bought a red-and-gold velvet dévorée Fendi baguette bag back in the day, instead of the yellow snakeskin one that I might have actually carried and not looked like Eddy from Ab Fab. That was also the time I learned about that whole no-returns thing in Italian boutiques.
4. Far too early in the season — before I sussed out all the available merch — I used my Barneys Free Stuff giftcard on a pink and green floral print (what was I thinking, right?) Diane von Furstenberg dress I was going to wear to a summer wedding in England last year. Never went, never wore it anywhere else either.
5. Why, oh why, didn’t I buy that fur-lined raincoat at the Prada outlet in Tuscany? Whhhhhyyyyyy???? (Answer: I was way over my customs limit, and I really had no room left in my suitcase. But the real reason was that I was a fool.)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 at 3:26 pm and is filed under Shopping. 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.