the little blue box

on may 4th the new tiffany’s store opened at chinook center. first free standing tiffany’s store in calgary, so, a big deal. the next day, the angels (doutzen and candice) cut the ribbon to the new victoria’s secret store. a big week in the calgary consumer culture. some of the lessons learned this week? my fingers are much thinner than originally thought, this was probably my last time at the newly opened tiffany’s store and victoria’s secret really knows how to hype up an event. 

i shall elaborate: wednesday morning came and unlike any other morning, the press had a chance to literally have breakfast at tiffany’s. leaving the store with gifts of horseshoe charm necklaces, at 9:30 they officially opened it to the public. models dressed in holy golightly-esuqe outfits greeted the customers as they came through the door while others walked around, giving out tiffany cookies (courtesy of some housewife in georgia who mass produces them out of her suburban home, or so goes the rumour). that day two rings grabbed my particular attention. the simple frank gehry square ring (also pictured above) and the tiffany twist bow ring, being a little strapped for cash as of late i decided i was going to temporarily satisfy my greed with the frank gehry one (as clearly it came down to the price). 

the next day i went to tiffany’s to purchase the said ring, marking my first ever purchase from the jeweller. the experience at first was a positive one, the help came fast and despite the lingering crowds, was efficient, it was the second time when we went inside to try on some prospective wedding bands (oh yes!) that we stumbled. standing there in the bridal section you can smell nothing but thirst for commission. we are not interested in diamonds, or platinum. we just wanted to see some plain bands and size rob’s finger, but help was hard to come by. i get that we don’t look like we carry $10,000 in our pockets at all times but that just cost them a repeat customer. shame really because i can be a very obsessive customer, as we all already know. after leaving the store i had to retie my tiffany’s bow and realized how the packaging all of a sudden looked cheap in the yellow mall light. the tiffany blue really loses its lustre after the experience is over with. it did for me anyway. then after exploring tiffany’s website i realized one more curious thing: the prices. compare the us and the canadian site and you will soon find how incredibly marked up all the product is. my gold wedding band for example costs $650 in canada, compared to $400 in the us. that almost makes it more worth it to take a flight down to san francisco or la, combine a weekend away and get fairly priced gold. apparently i am the last person to have realized this, but i’m telling you, knowing this, i will never buy jewellery in this country again. i may be cheap but i will be the one with the extra $200 in my pocket (or in alexander wang’s). i am now struggling to decide whether i should take my ring and exchange it for a smaller size, through the years of buying ‘serious’ jewellery (all three times!) my fingers seem to shrink. a size 7 not long ago became a 6 and now that seems like a size too big. big decisions ahead of me at any rate. 

leaving the mall we passed by the new victoria’s secret store in hopes of getting a glimpse of the angels. unfortunately they were hidden past all the merchandise and ridiculous line ups. i recently went to the yorkdale location in toronto and was quite impressed with the store, having had seen the progress outside of chinook i created my expectations along the same lines, however, it ended up looking somewhat disappointing, besides the swarms of 16 year old girls waiting in line to get their fantasy shape bras there was nothing exciting about the new addition. i sound to myself like my brother right now, doing nothing but complaining, but i am just relaying to you my experience, blame it on a bad day, because in retrospect i do believe that the two new retailers are a great asset to not only chinook’s business but also to the city. giving people opportunities to spend money at home instead of going to the states is a potentially great thing for the economy (until of course they catch on to the 60% markup: there should be laws against that). but in the end it is a consumer’s market, let the consumer decide. xoxo