Into the land of $2,500 sneakers
If you’re wondering what to get for that special someone this holiday season, I’d like to recommend the turquoise, open-toe high heels at Dolce & Gabbana on Rodeo Drive.
In crocodile skin.
“How much are they?” I asked.
One thousand, six hundred, ninety-five dollars, the clerk said.
I think he saw me swallow my tongue.
But today they’re 40% off, he said.
Great. Maybe I’ll get two pair.
I asked the clerk whether he worried that the sluggish economy and tumbling stocks would keep people from spending this year. He didn’t.
“People who have money, have money,” he said.
He was speaking the day before Thanksgiving, when I polled Beverly Hills merchants and customers on the shopping season’s outlook. The entire American economy is based on the rich buying things they don’t need and the rest of us buying things we can’t afford. So let’s hope everyone steps up, regardless of what Standard & Poor’s has to say about it.
“We’re pretty much recession-proof,” said a sales manager at Harry Winston jewelers, where I peeked at a $70,000 snowflake diamond earring set with matching $55,000 necklace.
I think I might have committed a high-end retail faux pas when I asked if anything would be going on sale. It turns out there are no sales at Harry Winston, which makes sense when you think about it.
No one with a bout of shaky consumer confidence would bother entering an elegant store designed to resemble a jewel box, with satin velvet walls and a recording of Tony Bennett singing “Nancy (With the Laughing Face).” Nancy was laughing because she never clipped coupons and caught the bus to Target.
I did find one clerk, though, at Versace, who said any Beverly Hills merchants who claim they aren’t worried about a slow season are either foolish or lying.
“A lot of my customers are real estate investors,” he said, and then there’s the Hollywood writers’ strike to consider. Although he sold a $16,000 wristwatch Tuesday, he said there’s been lots of talk among merchants about the need to get creative with promotions, such as a 10% discount day for VIP customers.
When he worked at Fendi, he said, the store gave merchandise away, scot-free, to celebrities so common folk would covet the same items.
“Do you watch TV news?” asked the clerk, showing me a $2,810 white leather purse with enough silvery gewgaws on it to decorate a Clydesdale.
“This is the purse Britney always carries. It was popular before she started using it, but much more popular afterwards,” he said.
At Louis Vuitton, a clerk told me people are always “at their happiest” when they buy something at his store, even if it’s not a $30,000 crocodile handbag. He described one recent shopper as being in a trance as he bought seven pairs of men’s shoes, with prices beginning at $500.
“He was crazed,” said the clerk.
Given the number of shoppers like that from around the world who enter the store each day, the clerk had two words for the holiday season:
“No worries.”
Come to think of it, I could use a new pair of casual shoes. The clerk kindly pointed to a pair of sporty sneakers.
“Crocodile skin,” he said.
Have all the alligators of the world already been harvested?
The sneakers, by the way, are $2,500, which makes for a difficult choice.
Buy the sneakers, or pay the mortgage?
As I strolled the chandeliered boulevard trying to decide, I came upon a couple standing outside a store without a name.
“Do you know what store this is?” I asked.
“No, we thought you might,” said Cathy, of Cathy and Charlie Mahor, Chicagoans on vacation.
The front of the store looked like the entrance of an airplane hangar. From the sidewalk, mannequins could be seen below ground in glass-covered shafts, like anorexic miners at a costume party.
“It’s 343,” the Mahors’ daughter said of the store name.
“No, that’s the address,” said Cathy Mahor.
A store without a name said one thing to Mrs. Mahor:
Expensive.
She was happy to take pictures, but she wasn’t setting foot inside.
After a few minutes, the Mahor girl exited the hangar with the news we were all awaiting.
“Prada,” she said.
“Oh,” said her mother. “I guess we were supposed to know that.”
Across the street, a Parisian purveyor called Hermes proudly displayed its name on the building. Inside, a clerk told me that a woman who got a jump on the holiday shopping season had whipped out her Amex to buy a $148,000 bag that was much like the one she was already carrying.
You had to ask?
Crocodile, of course.
I told the clerk I’d just seen some dog collars in a display case and wondered if any of them came in crocodile. As a matter of fact, she said, she did have one. She removed it from the case and handed it to me.
It was $2,225.
But is that really what would make Fido’s holiday? For just a little more money, why not get the crocodile sneakers and let Fido chew them to shreds?
Just down the street, a cappuccino-colored Jaguar and a canary yellow Ferrari were parked right in front of Bijan Designer for Men. A sign in the window saluted the “Timeless Good Taste, Style and Power of Men!”
Making the list, their names painted on the window, were Julio Iglesias, Michael Ovitz, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sting, George Clooney and Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani emir of the State of Qatar, among many others.
I read all the names twice and didn’t see mine. Would it have made a difference if I’d bought the $2,500 sneakers?
A half-block away, I bumped into a man I’d seen going from store to store with his family. But at each shop, he dropped anchor at the door and waited for his brood.
“I don’t go for it,” Charlie DiGiorno said about over-the-top, name-brand merchandise. The retired salesman, who lives in Chino, was showing the sights to family from Kansas City, but he had no intention of removing his wallet from his pocket.
I told DiGiorno I’d just seen a $2,225 dog collar.
“If I bought it,” he said, “it’d have to sleep with me, clean house and do a few other things too.”
I’m with Charlie, but as the clerk said, people who have money, have money. We’ll know in a few weeks if they had enough to keep the cash registers ringing in Beverly Hills and beyond.
Call me twisted, but as I left, I was fantasizing about a live crocodile release on Rodeo Drive, with shoppers in rabbit and mink running for their lives, but weighed down by 11-carat brooches and reptilian handbags.
But that’s just my way of saying, “Happy holidays.”
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