This past Sunday, with no one to see and nowhere to be, I decided to head to the Upper East Side in Manhattan to check out Barneys New York’s going-out-of-business sale. I’d never been to this department store before—it was far too expensive to be interesting—but now that it’s currently in its death throes, I thought what the hell!!!!!!!
Barneys, to me, was always one of those old-school Manhattan institutions. A high-fashion, high-price and high-class department store for girls like Blair Waldorf and Serena van der Woodsen to flounce through when there was nothing better to do. As such, I never set foot inside it because I could never afford anything in there anyway. And, for the most part, I think terribly expensive clothes are superfluous and stupid.
This year, Barneys fell into bankruptcy and was subsequently sold for parts. Resulting liquidation sales are ongoing. They hilariously started as five percent markdowns on designer handbags (I don’t know who needs to hear this, but five percent off a bag that costs $2,400 is not a sale!), but now the discounts extend to basically everything else and up to 60 percent off certain items.
And they can be very, very ugly items!
I went browsing for some laughs, and I did find something to laugh about.
This heavily sequined jacket/shirt thing (maybe it’s a smock?) caught my eye from across the room. I went over for a closer look. It was a Valentino and it was very heavy—the design, no doubt, painstakingly assembled unnecessarily by hand. I checked the price tag and had to fight down a laugh.
It was $10,500. This ugly jacket costs more than my car!
I’m being unfair, of course. It was on sale! Thirty percent off, I think, which meant you’d only pay $7,350 for it. Additionally, there was the extra 20 percent off they’d take at the register for your entire purchase, so the final price would come out to something like $5,880. Now, that’s what I call a bargain.
But before Barneys start liquidating everything, it was hoping to sell that jacket at full price. Nearly $11,000 for a sequined piece of clothing nobody can quite place. The nerve!
Instead, I present to you some cars you could buy instead. Wear the car to the garden party. You’d look better in it than the Valentino, I promise.
1. Honda Beat — $9,999
2. Infiniti G37 — $7,900
3. BMW Z3 — $3,900
4. Nissan Laurel Sedan — $6,999
5. Porsche Boxster — $8,673
6. BMW M3 — $10,500
7. Mercedes-Benz C32 AMG — $5,600
8. Range Rover — $2,950
9. Chevrolet Corvette — $9,000
10. Volvo C30 — $2,500
Any one of these cars would be a better use of your money than that Valentino. Especially the Volvo. I hear it is very boring to drive but its looks have aged well. Unlike the jacket.