Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes
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If you wish you could sport $325 Chloe jeans, skip the three- year waiting list for the latest Hermes Birkin bag or be a muse to a hot designer - which is tres difficult work, of course - add Bergdorf Blondes (Miramax $13.95) to your reading list.
With plenty of bellini cocktails, Harry Winston engagement rings and PJ trips (that's private jet) to Europe, the simple plot offers a look at the many perils of being a Park Avenue Princess - like getting in for prized $450 highlights with Ariette at the Bergdorf salon. (You have to go every 13 days, natch.)
The frivolity begins when the unnamed narrator's best friend, Julie Bergdorf - as in daddy owns the department store - goes on the hunt for a prospective husband. After all, fiances are the it accessory of the season, she decides. "I have all the Vuitton bags Marc Jacobs ever made, but what's the point of my other arm if it doesn't have a fiance supporting it?"
During the hunt, life lessons are learned - like the need to prioritize when you're a New York fashion editor and self-described "Champagne bubble about town," as is our narrator.
An invitation-only Chanel sample sale, for example, is clearly a valid excuse to blow off a Palm Beach society interview for a top fashion magazine. Because shopping for $2,000 quilted purses at Target prices is "beyond."
Also, tolerance is a must. "If a girl is wearing last season's Manolo Blahnik stilettos, I won't immediately rule her out as a friend," our narrator implores. "I mean, you never know if a super- duper nice person is lurking in a past-it pair of shoes."
Bergdorf Blondes covers everything a New York fashionista (or a wannabe) could want: Sample sale politics, high-society soirees - and love, of course, at long last.
(C) 2005 The Palm Beach Post. via ProQuest Information and Learning Company; All Rights Reserved
