Fashion Indignity: Missoni for Target
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 4:33PM 
Tuesday was like Black Friday for women who troll style blogs. The Missoni for Target collection launched, and some of us lost our marbles. Deal hungry fashionistas lined up around the block. And the Target website crashed from the influx of online shoppers.
I wish I could say I was above the hysteria. But, as a fortune teller once informed me: I am highly susceptible to suggestion. And for those of us who like to gaze at pretty magazines and blogs, the PR for this launch was inescapable. I bought into the hype and clocked in at my local Target at 9:47 a.m.
I was too late.
“But I didn’t know you opened at eight!” hissed an elderly woman, who looked disturbingly like Elsa on The Real Housewives of Miami. The employee shrugged. It wasn't her fault.
We had been forewarned, but we hunted for leftovers anyway. Empty shoe boxes littered the floor. The apparel racks were stripped, save for five hideous coats that not even a Missoni label could get people to buy. And because Target sprinkled the collection throughout the departments on different floors, crazy-eyed ladies of discerning taste paced up and down the aisles like they were on a treasure hunt. It was all very undignified.
As I placed my consolation prize — 99-cent wine bottle gift bags, not Missoni — on the check-out conveyor belt, I noticed a few mothers flaunting the vibrant colored miniature booty in their carts behind me: Missoni baby onesies, little girl jumpers, itty bitty mary janes. As I bitterly shook my head — Fashion wasted on the youth! — I spotted my very own zigzagged treasure out of the corner of my eye, waded up in the gum and mints display.
I was the proud beneficiary of some earlier shopper's castaways: a Missoni knitted beanie and matching long gloves. Do I need them? Of course not. Did I buy them anyway? Absolutely.
[This post was also published on CultureMap Houston.]