11.10.2005

Fashion Frenzy

Sounds like the opening of Stella McCartney's line at H&M was insane, Gawker has first person accounts of the wreckage:

Just got back to work from the SoHo H&M (both stores) and all racks were completely empty of all goods by 10:07 AM. Only random scarves and keychains left. There was a lot of elbowing, screaming, and tripping others as a means of getting to the stuff.

Continued after the jump....
..........

The opening of H+M’s Stella McCartney collection was total and complete insanity. I was at the 34th and 7th ave store. I have never seen grown women act this way (well except for conde nast intramural events *snicker snicker*) pushing, shoving, grabbing and yelling.


One mad shopper pulled an empty metal rod and started hitting a display which had sweaters that were out of arms reach. Not even the mannequins were safe — people tore the samples from them.


And more shopper acounts from the PaperMag blog:

I went to the H&M on 51st and 5th at 8AM today to stake out a spot in line. I am by no means an obsessed fan, I just had my eye on a sweater. The press was already inside throwing around shirts and trouser and filling up bags while noshing on little breakfast treats. At about 9:30 the line was served some fruit skewers, scones and croissants. When the doors opened, people actually ran and then suddenly the floor was empty save for piddly little trinkets and some damaged goods. More clothes arrived about an hour later, but never made it to the floor since the H&M staff was swarmed before even hitting the racks. Here is where some genius made a terrible terrible call. Someone figured that, hey, if you have a store filled with elbowing women ruduced to tantrums over jeans, you should only put the goods in a tiny section of the store and then rope it off, thus creating an angry mob scene complete with trampling, screaming, and utter degradation of every 'lady' in the store. Holy shopping hell. People were ripping clothing away from each other. We bailed and caught our breath outside just as the police arrived.
I heard that the 34th street location thought that throwing the clothes from the middle of the escalator was a good call.
Supposedly H&M will be sending Stella shipments until Sunday. Good luck. And wear knee pads.


Plus one more account--in case you haven't had your fill--right here. Okay, so I don't think it will be quite this crazy in SF (I'm not sure why....us Californians can just take things in stride better because we're really cool like that) but I'm kind of thinking maybe I don't want to go....perhaps a little too stressful for my delicate self.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

im thinking we could go on a random day off in the morning just because i dont want old ladies pushing or shoving me too much. the question of the day is... do we have any random holidays after h&m opens?

fluxdemots said...

yeah for defs but we most defs won't be getting any stella by the sounds of this :(

Anonymous said...

how sad. boo new yorkers and pushing.

fluxdemots said...

no, new yorkers are cool (just intense) but--in completely unrelated news--I hate L.A. at the moment which is why I'm happy that H&M decided to come here first!

fluxdemots said...

Proof that it's not just the new yorkers (this is a comment from the Imaginary Socialite
):

"Love your site and bought the exact same shirt this morning in Chicago. It was insane. I was leaving and a women with a baby almost knocked me down running in, but, def. worth it."