Pink Slip can always count on Neiman Marcus to come up with a list of fantasy gifts that are never, ever, ever my idea of a list of fantasy gifts. I mean, tops of my list would be having some Mr. (or Ms.) Fixit blitzing through my condo and seeing to every tiny little repair that needs repairing - the glass doorknob that fell off; the outlet plate that needs to be screwed in; the bathroom sink drain that doesn't open up properly. Then there'd be someone taking that 20 year accumulation of desktops, laptops and printers out of my one and only decent sized closet, and then California Closeting the space. I'd also like someone to sort through my recipes and put the keepers in the cute little recipe box I bought last spring.
Guess I'm just in capable of thinking big. And/or expensive.
Anyway, N-M is at it again, and the first gift up is an Aston-Martin designed by Daniel Craig. Now Daniel Craig has been known to creep into an occasional fantasy of mine, but not as a car designer. But there it is - or there 007 of them are: an "inky blue" Aston-Martin. For only $700,007 a piece. The price may seem high, but it does include a trip to London to watch it roll off the assembly line. Plus a fancy-arse 007-ish watch, and two tickets to the world premier of the new Bond movie, No Time to Die.
Of course, you don't want to show up in boring drab for No Time to Die. I mean, who'd want Daniel Craig to see them looking like that? So if you've got another $250K to throw at a fantasy, you could buy yourself a trip ot four shows at New York Fashion Week. Where, for each runway show you ooh and aah through, you get an outfit picked out for you by N-M. Now as it happens, I happen to know quite a bit about what goes on at fashion week - courtesy of a close friend recently retired from N-M, where she was a senior designer buyer. Joyce was a regular at all the Fashion Weeks - NYC, Paris, Milan, wherever else they're held. (Not being a dedicated follower of fashion, I don't actually know.) While for my friend Joyce, attending Fashion Week was both exhilerating and super-high pressure, to me it would be a colossal nightmare. All those skin and bone models parading up and down in outre outfits. And first name basis with Thierry Mugler and Stella McCarthy? That's a no, I'm afraid. But you could probably come away from it with something decent to wear to that Bond movie premiere.
This next fantasy gift makes absolutely no sense to me. For $400,000 - yes, that's a four with five trailing zeros - you get to attend a master class and then have a personal makeup session with someone named Mario Dedivanovi. Sure, Mario is apparently a celebrity of sorts, and an infuencer (that goes without saying). And he does throw in some of the product he uses to beautify you. But can't you get your makeup done for, like, free at any of the makeup counters at Macy's or Bloomingdale's or even - I'm winging it, here - Neiman-Marcus? I'll also note that each fantasy gift comes with a portion of the sale going to a charity. Twelve percent of the Aston-Martin, for example. Roughly five percent of the Fashion Week trip. But less than four percent of the makeup session. Hmmm. $400K for a makeup session really does seem like some sort of cosmic joke.
I'm just plain not a Boucheron kind of gal. So pretty much the last thing I'd do would be to spend $695,000 on a two-day trip to Paris for a behind the scenes Boucheron tour. Yawn. You do get to take a perle of great price home with you "to commemorate the experience." The Perle Au Tresor is a "precious objet d'art that opens to reveal a necklace, a bracelet, and two brooches." None of which I'd care to wear, but ostentatious and gaudy has never been my kind of thing (other than when I'm trying to seem smart). Besides, none of it would look good with jeans and an L.L. Bean fleece.
I'm not even half way through the Neiman-Marcus Fantasy Gift catalogue and I'm already near-overcome with fatigue, mostly just wondering who out there actually wants any of this stuff. Which is a stupid thing to wonder about, given that I have been to Dallas a number of times - a place where you might actualy see someone wearing Boucheron jewelry...
Anyway, tomorrow we'll be back to report out on the remaining gifts in the catalogue - gifts that actually promise to be more entertaining, in a make-fun kind of way. If I were the type to ever get in a make-fun kind of mude...
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