It’s been a good day today.
If you can imagine, I’ve been on a shopping slump for months on end, and it was only today that I seemed to be striking it ridiculously lucky in stores. Myer’s shoe department is currently on sale, with most full-priced items 25% off and sale items at 50% off. Naturally, I couldn’t leave the store empty-handed. (The rest of Myer was on sale as well from what I saw, but three football-field-sized levels worth of stuff to work through leaves a frugalista like me feeling a little ill.)
Anyways, these are the babies I purchased. A pair of Basque Hannah Cranberry Pumps and Vince Camuto Verona Ruby Pumps. The Basques are reduced from $139 to $80 to $40 and the Vince Camutos are reduced from $189 to $99 to $50. Awesome prices!
As you can tell, I love suede right now. The downside to suede heels sitting on flimsy sale racks for months on end, however, is that they tend to get damaged. Just a little trauma will scrape suede right off the shoe and unlike plain or patent leather, suede also fades under the powerful halogen lighting. I knew that there was a perfect pair of size 39’s in the cranberry pumps out back in the CBD’s Myer, so I struck it quite lucky, because every other 39 I tried on had a left shoe that was four shades lighter than the right one. The ruby pumps were a little dinged up from being tried on more than a few times, but mostly unnoticeable because of the beautiful feature bow on the front. I did regretfully tell the sales assistant that while I wanted to buy them, I wished that they weren’t damaged, and she told me to tell the front counter that she told me I could ask for a further 10% off because of the damage. So when I did, the shoes dropped to $45! Not a bad deal at all.
Fast-forwards to a few hours later, I was wandering through an alley in the CBD and came across a store called Igedo. Normally I don’t bother with them because they’re quite expensive, but they currently have a lot of sale racks marked down to $19, so I snuck a peek. Lo and behold, I found this gorgeous woollen jacket with leather trims.
I was on the fence about the purchase, because they only had size 6 and 8 left. Since both were too tight for me but I was so in love with it, I picked the larger of the two size 8s on the rack and as I was walking to the counter, I noticed that there was a tiny stain on the shoulder and a pen mark under the lapel. Thinking back to my trip to Myer, I asked the sales assistant if she could give me a discount and she offered the jacket to me for $15–down $19 down from $120! When I got home, I noticed that it matched perfectly with the vintage 100% silk houndstooth skirt I had bought at Vinnies a while back, and that made me even happier!
My last story, though I don’t have any photos, was that I went to Target and found a gorgeous City Dressing dress (it’s white with thick black stripes and red roses along the hem) in the damaged items/no packaging rack for $4, down from $79 in my exact size! To the untrained eye, the zip was damaged beyond all repair, but a crafty frugalista saw it differently and snagged that baby off the rack. A few minutes of my time and the zip was fixed, good as new.
I took photos of the repair process (because it seems like zips are the first things to go on items accumulated in those racks) so if anyone’s interested in seeing them, please comment below and I may just write a little zip-fixing tutorial for you guys! :)
Anyways, that’s all from me for today. The moral of the story is that damaged items give you great leverage when it comes to bargaining because they’re harder to sell, so don’t be afraid to ask for a further discount, many stores will happily give them!