There are three mass movements that have long confounded me. One, of course, is the mass movement of little lemmings over the cliff and into the sea. For lemmings, life hasn`t a lot of zing. Another is the annual pilgrimage of Moslems across the sun-baked deserts of Saudi Arabia to Mecca–a trek that often rewards them mostly with blisters and floggings.
The third is the annual flocking of the nation`s provincial elite to New York City for what they call Christmas shopping and what a psychiatrist would call acute self-induced masochistic dementia.
It isn`t as though there aren`t chic emporiums enough back home more than happy to encourage the self-indulgent in their sprees. But the provincial elite feel the down-home is simply too, too down-scale. Nothing less than the actual real Fifth Avenue will do, no matter what the consequent cost in mental and fiscal health. Here then, a few tips on the ultimate New York trip.
When to go. If you call now, you can still get a hotel reservation–for next year`s Christmas shopping season. For this year`s, you`d have better luck getting a room in Buckingham Palace than you`d have acquiring even shelf space in a linen closet in one of New York`s ”nice” hotels. The classic and great Plaza Hotel, the ultimate staging base for a New York grand shopping tour, was, of course, booked up eons ago.
Where to shop. New York`s Truly Elite shopping sections occupy only brief stretches of just three streets, and one could easily fit them into a corner of a Tulsa shopping mall, if one wanted to be beastly.
The three are: Fashionable Fifth Avenue, running from about Saks at 49th Street up to Bergdorf Goodman and F.A.O. Schwarz at 58th Street; Exquisite East 57th Street, actually starting from Henri Bendel on mere West 57th Street and running past Tiffany`s at Fifth Avenue east to where it begins to look dreary again; and Marvelous Madison Avenue, from chic Bulgari`s at 61st up past the Yves Saint Laurent boutique and the incomparable Whitney at 75th but not all the way up to 96th Street, where the boutiques tend to Michael Jackson outfits.
There are Bloomingdale`s and Macy`s, of course, but for the Truly Elite, really there aren`t. You didn`t come all the way from Dallas, darling, to mingle in the butcher-block furniture section with yuppies.
Transport. Do leave your tacky little white Texas Cadillac or Midwestern Mercedes ”conquest car” at home. They`re not going to impress New Yorkers
(an M-1 tank with tape deck and wet bar would not impress a New Yorker) and it costs nearly as much to garage a car in Manhattan as it does to lodge a dignitary and his most extravagant mistress.
There are taxicabs, of course, but during the Christmas shopping season, really there aren`t. New York has licensed 11,787 cabs–to serve 7 million residents and 900 million tourists–and at Christmas time the drivers all seem to be off at their villas in St. Tropez.
What one does, then, is hire one of New York`s 45,000 limousines. They can be had for a few hundred dollars a day (much less than an extravagant mistress), and the drivers will happily creep slowly around the block near Saks or Bergdorf`s while you`re inside shopping leisurely.
Prices. In other cities, the basic monetary unit is the $1 bill. In New York, it`s the $20 bill. A simple drink at the Palm Court of the Plaza will set you back $6.75. A mere glass of Mondavi vin tres ordinaire at the Barclay runs $7.50. New York should have its own currency–printed on egret feathers. Fur coats. Of course you must wear your fur coat to New York. What other possible use do you have for it in Dallas? But don`t expect to be noticed. Every shopgirl with a charge card has a fur coat in Manhattan, and there are so many that Fifth Avenue in December looks like an escape route from the Central Park Zoo.
Shopping late. If you mean to shop later than 10:30 a.m. in New York, you had better be unusually outgoing and gregarious–and wearing a flak jacket, safety shoes and hard hat. It might also help if you are dead drunk. Surviving one hour in a Manhattan department store in mid-afternoon requires the same social and combat skills as surviving the French Revolution.
Shopping early. The alternative is to rush to the stores just after they open at 10 a.m. You won`t encounter many other shoppers, but you`ll be fair game for the hordes of extra store personnel who`ll be awaiting your coming like hunting dogs sniffing the first scent of pheasant.
Now, really. New York stores like to add little extras to show how superior they are to the provincial outlets. Gucci on Fifth Avenue, for example, plays Italian opera outside and in. Bijan, the raffish Beverly Hills designer who recently was pushing gold-plated designer pistols for the nervous rich, has a Fifth Avenue store now. Its window proclaims ”By Appointment Only,” and there`s a man stationed at the door dressed in white tie, jacket and gloves as though put there to enforce the rule.
Go up to him. Say your uncle just left you $10,000 but unfortunately you don`t have an appointment at Bijan`s. Turn and head toward Saks. Watch the doors–and windows–of Bijan`s fly open. Watch Bijan himself come running after you in a sweat, maybe all the way back to Dallas. —
