Sure, we feel hungover today, our credit card balances are substantially higher, and my husband’s closet space has again diminished, but boom! Team Yet To Be Named? Two! Capsule collection frenzy? Zero!
What lessons have we learned this time around?
Research continues to be key—we knew from H&M’s website that the first 420 in line would get a wristband; that we would be cattled in for a 10 minute mad dash in groups of 30; and that shopping would start at 8:00 AM sharp. On the location front: Isabel Marant only graced three stores in Toronto and, as you’ll read below, our decision to stick to the nose bleed section was the right one.
The early bird gets the fringed alpaca cardigan—as planned, we landed just before 4:00 AM, to find a line-up already in place. And by line-up, I mean four lovely ladies huddled in Yorkdale’s foyer, the earliest of whom had arrived around 2:00 AM. High fives all around for numbers five and six in line! Within about 30 minutes a more substantial crowd began to form; clearly some people feel that waking up at 4:00 AM is leaps and bounds more civilized than 3:00. But those people were wrong (or at least not as well dressed as we are today).
Make friends—the people in the line next to you are good to pal with for a multitude of reasons. Other than the obvious fact that you’re stuck with them for at least a few hours and they may have snacks, our line chums had already done some sizing recon, which we had failed to do (collective gasp), and thank the sweet lord they shared their findings with us. This collection ran super small (we’ll call it Parisian sizing, shall we?), so we didn’t waste time grabbing our usual size in the more structured pieces and went straight for the upper end, with excellent, though somewhat self-esteem bruising, results.
Elbows up—some people don’t have manners; they attempt to jump the queue, they push, they’re sneaky, and they’ll smile the whole way through. It’s important to make friends, but it’s also important to gauge your competition. Just because some twit brought her baguette-sized Paris Hilton dog into line doesn’t mean she isn’t ruthless; rest assured, ladies, that bitch’ll bite.
And now, for your viewing (and wistful sighing) pleasure—some of the loot (instagram styles):
Black Lace Top
Hooded Cardigan
Linen T-Shirt
Capsule collections so far announced for 2014 include PETER PILOTTO for Target and Sophia Webster for JCrew, but we know there will surely be more to come (and hopefully by that point we’ll have a witty team name).
