First Shopping Trip to Bloomingdale’s and Louis Vuitton – Rite of Passage

Bloomingdale’s the iconic department store is a shopping destination for both New Yorkers and tourists alike. When I moved to New York, I spent many a Saturday afternoon shopping at Bloomingdale’s. I am not even going to think about the thousands that were dropped in that store. Now,  I hardly ever go to the store or to any department store for that matter because it’s not really convenient and frankly, I don’t have the patience nor time to deal with the crowds. And now that there is internet shopping,  Good effing Grief, how old am I?  But  I digress.

So how did we end up in Bloomingdale’s?

On the way back from seeing the New York Theatre Ballet’s Little Exquisite Ballets performance, my daughter spotted the Louis Vuitton display in the Bloomingdale’s window. How does my daughter know the instantly recognizable name of Louis Vuitton.  Two reasons, I have the LV Never Full bag (I love that bag and if you are going to splurge on a bag,  this is the one bag everyone woman should have) and because she recently went to the FIT exhibit on Japanese street fashion (Shout out to the Harajuku girls) and saw the Murakami Louis Vuitton.

For those of you, who don’t remember, this bag was commissioned by Vuitton in the early 2000’s and was designed by renowned Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. This bag has a special memory because it was introduced the same year I adopted my daughter. Of course at the time, I did not know  I was going to be a mother. I was on holiday in Paris when I ended up at the Vuitton store and contemplated buying the bag because I thought what the hell who knows when the adoption thing was going to happen. I decided not to buy the bag as it seemed like it was too in the moment and a year from now, everyone would have moved on to the next big bag.

So we wandered over to  see the Louis Vuitton bags in the window and next thing you know my daughter insisted on going into the store to look at more Vuitton bags. Okay, what the hell!! It’s been a long time since I wandered the store so I said sure, why not.

My daughter was fascinated that you could actually buy luggage and trunks not just bags. I will let her find out how insanely expensive they are at a later date. It was actually an educational experience as she was able to view the different fabrications of each bag and express an opinion about each one.

As I thought, we were finished, she asked if we could go to the kids section to a little bit of shopping.  I am thinking this is not going to end well. Now for the record, unlike many other girls her age, she pretty much will wear what I put out for her and we have never had an argument about the topic. Now as anyone knows, Bloomingdale’s is no Target or Kohl’s and I envisioned my daughter picking out $100 plus dresses and there being an argument about why she couldn’t have them.

I was actually surprised at my daughter’s choice of designers. She gravitated to the Ralph Lauren section (and for the record, my daughter knows how to say his name correctly, yeah.) We ended up with all dresses (on sale of course) and headed to the dressing room.

Even though I go out of my way to avoid taking my daughter shopping (it’s just too time-consuming), sitting in the dressing room watching her try on clothes was just so cute. There is nothing like  having a three way mirror to see all the angles. My daughter was consumed with dresses that swing. We ended up with a blue gingham checked Ralph Lauren dress. Yes, gingham.

As we stood in front of the register,  my daughter saw a Juicy Couture floatie and scuba gear, both marked $78. Can you imagine?  I just told her that is insane and I was not going to buy it. Even the sales lady agreed.

The best part of the day was that the dress was actually marked down to $25 not $40. Woo hoo!!! So I bought two dresses, one pink and one blue. Why the hell not!! It will be a long time before we have another shopping trip to Bloomingdale’s.

Lucky for me, she forgot about her looking at shoes because that would have been ugly.