Friday: brown Valentino slingbacks

I know, I know, just getting around to making a New Year’s resolution a week into the new year isn’t exactly a good sign that you’re going to stick with it. Heck, you’ve already guaranteed yourself at least a 2% failure rate for the year. But here I am, on January 6, declaring that I’m going to get healthy this year. Diet. Exercise. Sleep.

Uh huh.

Well, come to think of it, I did go to yoga class for the first time in, oh, about two months (first time in a gym in at least one month) two days ago. Of course, immediately after class I went straight into a two-and-a-half hour dinner at a great Chinese place on the East side where the three of us shared four appetizers and three entrees — mostly fried or coated in some sugary marinade or both. Yikes. And I’ve eaten out every meal since.

Wait, did I say diet and exercise or diet or exercise?

Of course I could’ve chosen a far harder resolution, like, say, not shopping. (I tried that already, after my mom came to visit and ordered a purge and a draconian shopping ban — and look how long that lasted!) Years ago, in college, I gave up for Lent (much more reasonable at six weeks — so what if I’m not Catholic?) fried food and desserts. A few days in, I realized that was all I ever ate. I also tried not shopping for Lent one year. In theory it’s much easier when you’re a poor college student; in reality there are credit cards.

So I don’t have a good track record with these resolutions. You know the road to the gym is paved with good intentions. But when the calendar says January, good intentions still count for something!

Wednesday: green ponyskin Manolos

Need an excuse to buy a new pair of shoes? Well, if you’re reading this blog, the answer’s undoubtedly no — but you may still want to score an invitation to the Some Like It Haute book launch party. One lucky winner will be chosen at random to get invited to the bash, scheduled for January 13 in New York City!

If you’d like a chance to meet the author and check out her shoes, have a few drinks and hobnob with the media and assorted smart-and-shallow types, just send an email with your name and email address. Deadline is midnight on Monday, January 9. Don’t worry, your info will not be resold or redistributed. We’ll only use it to let you know if you’ve won — and you may get an email with book news as the pub date approaches.

Good luck all — and start picking out your party shoes!

(P.S. Just so there’s no confusion, travel and accommodations aren’t included, alas.)

Monday: black crocodile Prada mules

Maybe it wasn’t just exhaustion that made post-Christmas shopping such a bust (by my standards anyway). Maybe it was because I had been spoiled by the made-to-measure tailoring I had done in Vietnam. Imagine this: Walk into a tailor’s shop with a picture of a blouse clipped from a Barneys catalog, get measured every which way with swift, surgical precision, and four days (for a rush order — and when she said 5 o’clock, she meant 5 o’clock, not one minute earlier, as the seamstresses were busy snipping stray threads and sewing on buttons down to the wire) and oh, about $4 later, you’ve got an exact replica of said blouse in your exact size.

It’s the next best thing to haute couture (one day… some day!), give or take a few zeroes in the price tag, and without the repeated blush-inducing standing-in-your-undies-in- front-of-a-cast-of-thousands episodes.

I didn’t go on the trip with the intention of getting a whole new wardrobe (and that, come to think of it, would take a whole lot more excess baggage charges than I already had to pay). But I did stock up on a lot of staples — cuffed wool trousers, silk blouses, even a light tweed 1950s style suit (torn from the pages of Vogue). I mean, that suit wasn’t even necessarily on my shopping list for spring, but hey, for thirty bucks, why the heck not? Forget, if you please, the 24 hours of travel time each way and the thousands of dollars in air fare and hotels. Not counting that, what a bargain!