Dreaming about Bergdorf Blondes

One of my summer rituals is to pull out all summer back issues of my favorite magazines and flip through them to get a feel of summer. Whenever I read features on sunblock, summer makeup, the swimsuit for your body type, and perfect summer getaways. I start craving for ripe mango shakes and the stinging feel of the sun on my slathered-with-sunblock skin. However, as my summer will be cut short by my imminent summer classes, this time I had put away my withered magazines and promised myself to start reading again. Not just magazines or the labels on junk food, but the sort of books I used to read a lot of, the sort that teachers assigned to their students. Classic novels. Poetry. Books by Strunk and White or Kate Turabian. Or at least any of the books in my growing pile of To-Read books. I’ve got at least seven of them crowding up the rest of the junk in my room. I was ready to finish Collected Novellas by Gabriel Garcia Marquez or start Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher, PhD. I needed to jumpstart activity in my brain after a long time. So it was either losing myself in Garcia Marquez’s thick and intoxicating language or learning about the issues that teenage girls go through.

Still every time I prepped my bed for some reading time, I kept picking up Bergdorf Blondes, a new novel by Plum Sykes. It’s been a while since I’ve read chick lit. I can usually guess the plot without even reading the blurb at the back – fabulous-in-hiding girl with problematic, unsatisfactory, and depressing life finds a new venue to change her life, making her successful, fulfilled, and completely happy. Usually, by the end of the book she ends up realizing that she’s in love with the man she least expected to fall for. A lot of people love reading chick lit because it shows them that even ordinary, imperfect people can have fantastic and remarkable things happen in their lives. Ineloquent, non-thin, single girls could relate to Bridget Jones. Shopaholics could relate to Becky Bloomwood’s confessions. Both girls thought their lives couldn’t get any more miserable, but eventually found their own unique ways to change their lives. Of course, they end up with the men we knew, by the first few pages, the girls would unknowingly fall for – Mark Darcy and Luke Brandon. There are several chick lit books in bookstores besides Bridget Jones and Confessions of a Shopaholic, all with colorful covers with enticing blurbs, inviting you to see your own life in the central character and realize your own life’s resilience and hidden beauty.

However, Bergdorf Blondes opens a different door for readers, and as Candace Bushnell put it, the novel is "haute couture chick lit." Instead of reading about the average Jane, readers discover the glamorous world of high-society New York. It’s a whirlwind of fashion designers, private jets, luscious bags and clothes, and prestigious parties. Everyone dreams of living the lifestyle of the rich, famous, and fashionable. Imagine getting up at noon, getting invited to all the exclusive parties, receiving designer clothes to wear to these events, and spending nights at phenomenal suites at ritzy hotels. Welcome to the life of the Bergdorf Blonde, which according to the book, is "actually très difficult. You wouldn’t believe the dedication it takes to be a gorgeous, flaxen-haired, dermatologically-perfect New York girl with a life that’s fabulous beyond belief." While other chick lit novels remind you of your own life, this one presents the life you’ve always dreamed of having.

Bergdorf Blondes reveals the secret lifestyle and habits of these fabulous New York princesses. You’ll read about private Chanel sample sales, exclusive dermatologists and hairdressers, fashion designers fighting to have certain women wear their clothes, and quick trips to Paris to get over a heartbreak. You’ll discover new terms, like ana, which means anorexic thin, and translates as perfect to some people. A fake bake would mean a fake tan from a special spa at West Broadway, SPDV means Same People Different Venue and ATM is a rich boyfriend. The text is sprinkled with little French words (Bergdorf Blondes think replacing very with très means being fluent in French), the biggest fashion names, and hilarious musings of a Bergdorf Blonde.

The book introduces hilarious, comical characters, from the American mother relentlessly trying to be English, a rich socialite obsessed about giving parties, a Park Avenue princess giving away diamond necklaces as gifts. You would never expect these characters to exist in real life, but in this book you relish and laugh at the absurdity of their personalities. I figure that people with lives that fabulous have to have some kind of personality defect for there to be justice in the world. You also see how these characters think and will laugh at how they deal with their problems. Have you ever flown to Paris to stay at the Ritz to get over an ex-boyfriend, write your last will and testament and send it to everyone you know through e-mail? You’ll end up laughing at the quirks of all the characters and the situations they get themselves into.

If you’ve ever wondered about the elite world of fashion and high society, Bergdorf Blondes gives you a delicious, satirical, and hilarious peek into all that glamour and glitter. So you won’t learn anything life-changing or incredibly profound – you probably already know that being rich and famous doesn’t give you a perfect life – but the book is still wildly funny and entertaining. Reading this is as sweet and fun as playing dress-up, when a blanket becomes a wedding gown, mom’s old platform sandals become Manolos, an old, crazy, glittery dress becomes your gown for the Oscars. It’ll spark your imagination, keep you amused, and, even for just a moment, experience a world you may never be able to see – or afford – in real life.