What did I tell you about Chicago weather? From gorgeous, coatless Friday afternoon lunch at the Bean to the weekend: chilly, rainy and damp. Nevertheless, Heidi and I braved the elements yesterday morning to a sample sale at Lill Studio. If you are unfamiliar with this company (can't get my linky thing to work this morning, but their site is http://www.1154lill.com/) it is a design studio that allows you to design handbags. I had first heard about them from an Alford colleague who had been given one of bags as a bridesmaid's gift. They have certain bag style templates and then a roomful of pretty fabrics that you can choose from to create an original bag. My first thought after my colleague told me this was (naturally): MUST...TELL...HEIDI! I mean, come on. A place in the city where you get to make bags? Hell to the yes, I knew we'd need to go there. And we did, and the rest is history. As lovely as this all is though, these gorgeous bags are quite pricey, since once you choose the fabric, and the lining, etc etc it is sent off somewhere and hand sewn. As a result of this, I only have one of these bags. It's sort of an investment...
Heidi emailed me a few weeks ago to let me know there was going to be a sample sale on the 7th and did I want to go? A word on these sales - we attempted to go last September and were thwarted by a torrential downpour of rain that flooded our basements. I was alone in the house at the time and up to my ankles in water. Could not leave the house under such conditions, and so no cheap bags for us. Naturally, when I got this invitation I jumped at it. And, strangely enough, it is raining cats & dogs again this weekend. Is it mother nature's way of saying "Save your money and quit buying bags?" But I can't believe that she would say something like that, because if she saw these bags, she'd want one for herself, I am sure. But anyway. The samples at this sale were 50% off and sometimes more.
So. We were off by 7:00 (on a saturday morning, no less. This, my friends, is dedication.) and made our way to the Lill warehouse. It was on the west side, in a sort of spooky looking industrial back alley... but inside... it was a wonderland. Several aisles with racks filled with bags of all shapes and sizes. We'd gotten there just in the nick of time, right after we arrived it started really filling up. We started slowly, fingering luscious fabrics, drooling and going well, I'm not sure... but then we learned. From that point on, anything we saw that attracted our attention we grabbed. Grab it now or it will be gone later. Soon my arms were loaded down with stuff. I could barely make my way through the aisles without knocking down (or being knocked down) other girls with their arms also full of bags. We found a corner and started going through the stuff. The no's were scooped up by sales staff and returned to the floor. As we made our decisions, there was still a part of each of us that were curious to see what else was being returned to the floor by women in their own corners of the room who were doing the same thing we were. So one of us stayed with the loot while the other one made an additional sweep or two amongst the racks. After much, much, much, much, much deliberation and totalling, we decided to get in line. And it started again. The line was long, see, and there wasn't much else to do but stare at the racks to see if there was anything else we might have missed. Once or twice one of us left the line, brought back another lovely, admired it, debated its merits, color, wearability, etc and then more often than not, returned it to the rack. It wasn't just us doing this, either, pretty much everyone in line was doing the same thing.
Anyway, it was really lots of fun. I bought two gifts (one that was supposed to be for Mother's Day, but I just couldn't wait and so I gave it to my mom yesterday), a bag for work and a few other things. What the hell, right? I will have fabulous bags AND I did a small part for a Chicago business.
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