Friday: brown suede Jimmy Choo boots

It’s happening.

The unquestionable holiday cheer of having 524 skyward-gazing tourists standing directly between me and some very important business I have to do at Saks has officially turned me into Scrooge in the City. Bah humbug!

Oh, all right, that’s really just a lame excuse for the mood I’m in. The truth is that I’m a lousy Christmas shopper. It’s 27 days to Christmas and the tally just this week stands at:

Holiday purchases for me: 1 skirt, 2 sweaters, 2 pairs of pants, 1 handbag, 1 gold ring
Holiday purchases for everyone else: 0

You see why I’m grumpy?

I try, I really try! But unlike a friend of mine, who so bravely told me that she had sworn off shopping for herself until she had checked every last friend and relative off her Christmas list, I just don’t think that’s physically possible for me. During the holiday season, all those shiny, sparkly decorations and the full brunt of retail pressure (Buy! Buy! Buy! Time’s running out!) send me into a delirium, a dollar daze. And next thing you know, my credit card’s out and I’m telling the saleswoman yes, please give me a gift receipt; the only reason why I tried the item on was because my sister — and my mom and my dad — just so happens to wear the same size I do. Uh huh. Sometimes I’m not even making excuses because it doesn’t even cross my mind that I should be shopping for other people. The Christmas lights made me do it!

Naughty girl. At this rate, there’s no way Santa’s going to be stopping by my house this Christmas eve. But that’s okay, by then I will have already bought everything on my wish list!

Wednesday: mauve Prada slingbacks

Apologies to Daphne Du Maurier, but I find that my dreams have been really vivid lately. Instead of my typical anxiety dreams of being naked at a school assembly or forgetting my locker combination or not being able to find homeroom or realizing that it’s the end of the semester and not once did I ever attend that physics class — yes, high school was an anxious time for me — I’ve been dreaming a lot about shopping.

Sometimes such dreams can be good. Like Kate, who posted here about dreaming that she was wearing my Guccissima slingbacks, I have had my dreams haunted by the image of me in a particularly beautiful — and usually, particularly expensive — item. (Right now it’s that bloody Roland Mouret galaxy dress, I suspect partly because it’s so ubiquitous, but mostly because I saw it in my size at Bergdorf’s a while ago and didn’t snatch it up! Like I said, haunted.) Recently, I dreamt about happening upon a fabulous Temperley sample sale. Often, the night before a big shopping trip, my REM sleep is filled with scenes of scoring lots and lots of goodies. On the one hand, it’s just a different kind of anxiety dream, but if you think about it, it’s really more of a positive-thinking/wish-fulfillment kind of thing (see fantasizing), and heck, my life is all the richer (and at the same time, when I later reenact them, poorer) for it.

And then there are the nightmares. Not long ago I dreamt that I was wearing a beautiful, brand-new cream-colored Chanel jacket when someone carelessly flicked her cigarette in my direction and somehow burned a big hole in my sleeve. (I confess this is actually one of my weird irrational fears that sometimes keep me from breaking in new purchases.) I may have woken up crying; I know I was definitely in a cold sweat. Then last week I dreamt that I was at the Lainey Keogh studio in Dublin and tried on sweater after sweater (under any other circumstances, this qualifies as a good dream) but left — gasp! — empty-handed. And what do you know? The next day I got an email from the studio saying that the coat I ordered back in September may be delayed. Oh God, please tell me I’m dreaming!

Monday: Bottega Veneta ponyskin slingbacks

Don’t call me Imelda Marcos.

Not because I’m in denial. I’m not. I know my problem is very real. Someone pointed out recently that although I give away bags full of shoes and clothes to Goodwill at least four times a year, my closet astonishingly never seems to get any less full — as if it were a cornucopia blessed not by Zeus but by some heretofore undiscovered Greek god of footwear. And yet, nor does the closet overfloweth. My theory is that I subconsciously make sure that my shoe count always hovers just below the triple digits, because in my mind crossing that barrier would mean that I really had a problem.

But I digress. The reason I can’t relate to Imelda is that the 1,220 pairs of shoes the former first lady of the Philippines famously left behind when she fled the presidential palace in 1986 were so terribly boring. She herself has admitted (or rather rationalized) that most of them were practical pumps — and indeed I remember seeing footage of the shoe collection, and to my disappointment they were often the same unextraordinary style, just in dozens, no, hundreds of different colors.

And as someone who lives for the thrill of the chase, I just can’t understand that. What’s the joy in just buying the same shoe in a dozen colors at one time? Not that I would likely turn my nose up at a pair of Manolo Blahnik Carolyne slingbacks no matter how many I already have. And not that I don’t own many, many tall black boots. But each pair is unique: purchased at a different store, in a different season, in a different mood. Every shoe, you see, tells a story. Imelda — merely excessive. Me? I believe the word is obsessive.

Friday: green pony Manolos

R. Kelly has built a cottage industry of his “Trapped in the Closet” urban melodrama (in case you’ve been, well, trapped in a closet, check out this very funny Cliff’s Notes summary). While I find the adulterers hiding in closets (not to mention the lusty little person hiding in a kitchen cabinet) vastly amusing, I think I could write my own, equally entertaining R&B opera about what’s trapped in my closet.

Here goes:

9 o’clock in the morning and the start of Regis shakes me
I’m showering and drying my hair oh so quickly for me
Then the voice in my head tells me to get outta the bathroom
Then I come out and look there and to my surprise I have no clue
Now I’ve got this dumb look on my face like what have I done?
How could I be so stupid to not lay out my clothes in the morning sun?
Must have lost the track of time, oh what was on my mind?
From the bed went to my desk, didn’t plan to read that long
Here I am quickly trying to pick out my clothes
Searching for my sweater, trying to match the skirt on the floor
Then I stretch my hands in front of me
Thought, “You can’t dress this way”
Looked in the mirror — looked crazy
Thought, “Woman, who looks this way?”
Brain said, “I got a meeting at ten”
Heart said, “Please don’t go out sloppy”
“Lordy I’ve got to leave home”
I thought my outfit was coming together
“Need some shoes, hurry up and look in the closet”
Heart said, “Don’t you look a mess or your rep is going down”
Brain said, “Why don’t you just wear the Manolos”
“Yes, except for one thing, you’ve worn them before”
Think, think… “Quick, look deep in the closet”
But before I search this darkest closet for better shoes…
Check under the bed (bed)
Then under the dresser (dresser)
I look at the closet (closet)
I pull myself together (together)
I walk up to the closet (closet)
I’m close up to the closet (closet)
Now I’m at the closet (closet)
Now I’m opening the closet (closet, closet, closet)…

Want to take a peek at what happens when the closet door finally swings open? Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing entertainment, here’s Shoetopia. (Sorry Mac people — Windows PCs with Internet Explorer only for the moment.)

Wednesday: black Prada crocodile slingbacks

My sister and I used to go on a shopping trip to Italy every January, during the sales — a whirlwind tour of Milan, Florence and Rome that involved molto money, not-so-molto museums. (Not that we’re complete philistines, but who has time to mix business with culture!)

Around this time of year, we’d start planning our trip with military precision, since we’d usually just have four days to hit the Golden Triangle of shops in Milan, the outlets in nearby Switzerland, the Prada outlet in Tuscany, the Gucci, Bottega Veneta and Prada boutiques on Via Tornabuoni in Florence and the Missoni store in Rome. And of course we would have to schedule our travel time around Sundays, when only outlets would be open. Despite the fact that we did it year after year, each time it would still be a tactical challenge. (Lord knows lugging our suitcases on and off the Trenitalia was akin to going to bootcamp.)

When we first started going, we were still dividing prices by 1900 to convert from lire (yet another challenge). But soon enough, we were feeling flush when we got our brand spanking new Euro notes out of the ATM at the airport: 85 cents to the Euro. Oh, those were the days… of $80 Prada shoes, $120 Missoni (and we’re talking orange label) sweaters, $75 Gucci sunglasses… Now, several years into a slumping dollar, where has the fun gone?

It bums me out that we’ve cancelled our trip the last couple of years. Sure, the dollar has gotten a slight bump on recent weeks, but even with that we’d probably be paying the same prices we would pay here during the sales. Though at Last Call I guess it would just be a much lovelier experience if the merch came with a side of fresh pasta!