I didn't buy Bergdorf Blondes. It was dropped off at my apartment by a friend, with a note that read:
Cheer up. Stop wallowing. Call me.
Love, S.
PS: no more Gilmore Girls reruns, seriously.
It was the summer of 2005. I was fresh off the heels of a bad breakup. To say I was wallowing in self-pity was generous. I was drowning in it. My summer job had ended and school hadn't yet begun, so I was free to spend my days in sweatpants on my couch, watching bad television.
I'm really not one for this kind of thing. Truly, I'm not. Ordinarily, I would have recoiled from a perky Tiffany-blue cover emblazoned with a gigantic pink diamond ring. I would have never made it past the first line: "Bergdorf Blondes are a thing you know, a New York craze. Absolutely everyone wants to be one, but it's actually tres difficult..." If I wanted to read a social comedy, I would pick up Emma or Vile Bodies, thank you very much. But I was in a weakened state. I was watching six episodes of Gilmore Girls a day. Culturally speaking, I had nowhere to go but up.
I didn't just read this book — I devoured it in one sitting. The narrator (known only as Moi) is a self-described "champagne bubble of a girl" who sucked me into her diabolically shallow, perversely materialistic world in a New York minute. It is fluff; but it is stylish, witty, and pitch-perfect. As Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City and consummate New Yorker put it, the book is "haute couture chick lit."
![Cristina Alger graduated from New York University School of Law in 2007 and lives in New York City](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/ed95eed/2147483647/strip/true/crop/474x474+0+0/resize/880x880!/quality/90/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia.npr.org%2Fassets%2Fimg%2F2012%2F03%2F15%2Falgerheadshot_sq-cdcd174bcf76befdff8b87682f90d7e394e83fd0.jpg)
There is no real plot to Bergdorf Blondes, but frankly, there doesn't need to be. It follows Moi, a British-born socialite, and her heiress best friend as they trot the globe, hunting for PHs (Prospective Husbands) with plenty of backstabbing, gossiping, shoplifting and party-going to keep the reader entertained along the way.
There's also a wickedly funny scene of Moi wallowing in the aftermath of a breakup (and by wallowing, I mean checking into the Ritz in Paris, melodramatically drafting a suicide note and will, and washing down eight Advil with a mimosa) which frankly, made it nearly impossible for me to take my own breakup all that seriously.
Plum Sykes is the ideal chronicler for Moi's escapades. She herself is a British-born socialite, and a very chic one at that. A contributing editor at Vogue, Ms. Sykes knows her way around Park Avenue parties and ultra-private samples sales better than anyone. She's also got a relentlessly sharp wit and a keen eye for detail. I've spent 28 of my 32 years in Manhattan, and I still felt like I was getting an insider's glimpse into an ultra-glamorous world. Ms. Sykes truly writes about her own world, and she does it in style.
Lessons learned: Write what you know. And don't judge a book by its Tiffany-blue cover.
My Guilty Pleasure is edited and produced by Ellen Silva with production assistance from Rose Friedman and Andrew Otis.
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