Sample sales are back says Sarah Macken. Here’s how the style set nab a bargain now…
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At The Row’s annual sample sale in New York last year, 2am queuers, line-sitters, and fan-girls (and boys) with folding chairs, some threatening to set up tents, were reported. Post-Covid, thanks to an excess of inventory and a challenging retail environment, sample sales have proliferated. Designers and brands – Khaite, the late, lamented The Vampire’s Wife, Richard Quinn and Jimmy Choo among them – superceded seasonal online sales with IRL (In Real Life) ones with better reductions: up to 75 or 80 per cent. In a juicy twist, celebrities are embracing the joy of a big sale, too: actor Chloë Sevigny and model Karen Elson are two of the high-profile names selling off their collections. Reality star and former J Crew creative director Jenna Lyons’ recent “stoop sale” had a cover charge and a Real Housewives crew filming it. On TikTok, one happy customer brandished the black Balenciaga bag she nabbed for $150 that still contained Lyons’ J Crew ID card. (The zenith of a fashion girl’s existence!)
New-gen sale-goers shop with a purpose. London-based TikToker Gabrielle Luksaite explains: “I’m sick of everyone having the same style on the street, so I’m looking for hard-to-get designer items from previous seasons or sold-out pieces I know nobody else will have, because there is a resale opportunity there too,” she says. The Row, alongside brands like Loewe and Khaite, is in high demand. Luksaite nabbed a pair of The Row Italian leather zip-up flatform black boots at an in-person Matches sample sale in East London venue The Box. She spent £400: they retail around £1,450.
We have tired a little of the solitary online shopping experience. As brands translate Instagram or newsletter communities into real life ones, there’s an opportunity and an appetite for connection. And a village-y feel. At a recent sample sale at a boutique in Dublin, I bumped into my neighbour in the queue, where we both befriended the stranger next to us. We chatted for 40 minutes about designer bags, fashion websites and other things. Even though the bargains were all snapped up, we left, oddly, lifted. “Loved the banter,” she texted me afterwards.
What are the rules of engagement? In London, expect pre-booked tickets, wristbands and a time limit on browsing. “Arrive early, grab everything you like, then go into a corner and do an edit,” says Orla Flood, a seasoned private sale shopper. In Ireland, generally speaking, she says, the vibe is less handbags at dawn, more ‘you get it girl!’. “You see women sharing what didn’t work for them in the fitting rooms and trading sizes,” she says.
But *ucket Lists don’t always have to be about adventure, a lot of it is about doing those things that you thought you couldn’t afford the time to do.
For Grainne Wynne, owner of Beautiful South boutique in Rathmines, private sales are an opportunity to nab a designer outside the usual roster of brands saturating the Dublin retail scene. Wynne opens up her home annually to sell pieces – clothes, bags, sunglasses and shoes – from her private collection, including US labels which, due to the crippling cost of customs and taxes, are no longer viable to sell in store – brands like Tibi, 3.1 Phillip Lim and Rachel Comey, for instance. Wynne posts details on Instagram, usually with short enough notice, to (somewhat) curb the crowds. “The first time I did it there were 100 women in my house – it was insane,” she laughs. What bargains had shoppers in a tizzy? “There was murder over a faux fur Tibi coat. Anything metallic – gold items always stand out,” she says. Surely, the snoop factor of visiting a designer, or boutique owner’s, home, only adds to the allure? “Oh god, yes,” Wynne notes. “You get to come to my home, have a glass of bubbly and try on nice clothes. People love a good nose.”
Wynne’s sale recalls the late 1990s heyday of sales hosted in a designer’s studio or – play it cool – their home, where you could nab a prototype or one-off piece from the industry’s coolest at a fraction of the retail price. (THE GLOSS editors are still sore, two decades on, about Chanel’s legendary, and very private, annual sale, limited to key press and friends of the maison, ruined for eveyone in the early 2000s, when one UK-based editor posted her haul on Facebook – access to the sale was limited therafter.)
To access the next sale near you, sign up for newsletters from your favourite Irish designers, follow your favourite boutiques on social, and be prepared to queue. Subscribe to www.thebox-london.com and www.showcase.co for events across the pond. Keep your eyes peeled for Irish label The Landskein and Blackrock boutique Slow Street who have held notable sales. Get in line, girls!
