Nicole's Blog

Nicole is director of fashion boutique, Brittique.com offering the latest high fashion, shoes and accessories from the best British designers. Current designers include Amanda Wakeley, Maria Grachvogel, Aimee McWilliams and Nicole de Main.

Nicole shops for shoes most. They're her ultimate weakness and whenever she's having a bad day buying shoes makes it all pale into insignificance. Her favourite online stores are Net-a-porter.com, MyTights.com and Ocado.com.

Not In The Bag...

Published on Sunday 24th June 2007

I’ve got a great friend, Jacqueline, who’s really into bags. From a great distance she can point out the name of every woman’s latest Chloe, Marc Jacobs, Mulberry... and other brands that are responsible for the latest must have arm candy – several of which that I’ve never even heard of.

Believe it or not I’m not a bag lady at all. Shoes are my thing. So the Anya Hindmarch “I’m not a plastic bag” bag craze passed me by completely.

Jacqueline bought a super inflated “I’m not a plastic bag” bag on ebay and wanted another. She emailed me to say that the Anya Hindmarch bags were up for grabs in New York, my new home.

Braving the thick New York humidity I skipped uptown to Anya’s. I thought the golf-ball like raindrops would be a deterrent to the crowds. Clearly not. When I got there the snaking queue had wrapped around the building and was nearly back at the beginning of the queue again.

I decided right there that despite an unread copy of the New Yorker under my arm I didn’t want a bag that badly.

The week before I had hit the Botkier sample sale out of sheer necessity – I need a new black bag (an absolute staple in my wardrobe). With an advertised start time of 11:00am I arrived at 11:23 and already the queue was around the block. After 50 minutes of waiting in line I was allowed to enter a busy but sparsely-bagged showroom. Apparently they were going to bring out more bags at 3:00pm. I felt a little ripped off after having spent nearly an hour queuing.

It seems that if I’m going to enjoy living in New York I’m going to have to learn how to enjoy queuing...

Long live the online sales.

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