oh, for the love of lilly

oh, target.  how i love you with your endless aisles of fantastic merchandise and your $100 minimum cover charge.  i do so much of my shopping at target, from groceries to toiletries to fun tees and everything in between.  and when they announced a collaboration with lilly pulitzer, she of the brightly patterned clothing originally designed to camouflage the stains from the juice stand she was working at, i marked my calendar for the release date.  this stuff is insanely popular on the east coast, but i had no idea if anyone in my sleepy town would have any interest in it.

with the hub off at an event with the lounge, the teen out with her special friend and the bean sound asleep, i sat in front of the computer on saturday night browsing through the online lookbook and creating a favorites list.

reading the tweets hashtagged #lillyfortarget was really entertaining, and it was really amusing to watch people get all bent out of shape over it all.

(as if you could compare a $30 dress at target to a $200 one from the full LP line)

this is one of my pet peeves, though.  instead of typing this crap on twitter, take your ass to google and figure that shit out for yourself.

although as time ticked away and no upload was happening, i started to get a little antsy myself.  predictions based on previous collaboration releases had placed the upload somewhere between midnight and 2am my time.  some folks were doing some serious sleuthing and finding a few items being released early, posting the links on twitter.  i found a couple of the things on my wish list and placed orders as they came available, which is probably cheating, but hey - all's fair in love and lilly, apparently.  target was clearly feeling the heat, based on these tweets:

the most frustrating thing was when the line was supposedly available for shopping, but when i'd place items into my cart and prepare to check out, they'd magically disappear.  this happened several times to me (and countless others, from what i could see), and then i'd get this:

although this looked promising, the item never actually made it into my cart.

oh, and this screen was also a favorite:

before the site completely froze up and gave me this:

i kind of felt bad for whoever was keeping an eye on their social media people, who must've dreaded hitting "send" on this tweet.

the hub was expressing his amusement over my antics that evening via text.  "did you win yet?" he asked.  bah.  it was nearly 2am and no, goshdarnit, i most certainly was NOT winning a damn thing.  after constant refreshing of the website with nothing happening and dozing off in my chair a couple of times, i finally threw in the towel and went to bed.  although the stupid competitive streak in me kept waking up every now and then, which had me pulling out my phone to see if anything had changed.  the website finally became shoppable somewhere around 4am, but i'd missed it and of course, everything i wanted online was completely sold out.  so instead, when my internal alarm clock went off at 6:45 like every other morning, i, uh...got up and tiptoed out of the house.  yup, i sure did.

as i pulled up to my local target on that beautiful sunday morning, i found nothing even remotely close to the pictures people were posting online of lines 100+ deep.  nope.  here in soCA, where lilly isn't really a household name, there was this:

first in line, yo!  hahahahahaha.

not long after i sat down, i was joined by a couple of other lilly for target hopefuls.  we started chatting about the craziness that had brought us out to shop at that early hour, compared notes on our online experience, went over our wish lists.  some were there shopping for friends and family on the east coast, and it was kind of fun waiting together for the doors to open.  

finally, at exactly 8:00, they did.

while the selection wasn't as vast as what i'd hoped for, there was a fairly decent number of items to pick from.  i plucked a handful of things (okay, a bunch of stuff) off of the racks in my size and then headed off to find some things for the bean.  the home goods section was way back in the furthest corner of the store, so when i found it there was still a good amount of merchandise available.

i didn't really see anything that i thought i could make actual use of - i just don't need $25 beach towels and don't really think the hub would let me put up a brightly colored patio umbrella or hammock.  nor did i really want the admittedly super cute plates and bowls, especially not at $30 for a set of 4.  i know that isn't particularly expensive, but i wasn't going to snatch them up simply because they were there.  and that way the folks who really did want them would hopefully still be able to take them home.

since i had time, i headed off to the dressing room to make sure that the things i wanted actually fit me.  i ended up with a couple of things that i wasn't too crazy about, and as i headed back towards the racks i ran into one of the ladies i'd chatted with at the door.  i asked her if she was interested in any of the things i was putting back, and she happily took one of them off my hands as she offered up her unwanted items.  when i got back to the front of the store, the racks looked quite a bit worse for wear:

i had to laugh when i saw this shirt, so appropriate for the occasion:

and when i passed the beauty section, i noticed that there were some things there too:

when i got home, the bean was awake and wondering where i'd been.  well, more accurately, she was surprised that i wasn't dressed in workout clothes and sweating my ass off.  but when i told her where i'd been and started pulling things out of the bags for her to try on, the smile that spread across her face made it all worth it.  

fashion show time!

 look at the cute detail on the zipper.  love it.

my own haul was just as satisfying.

and i managed to pick up a set of mugs for my friend lilcee.

while a lot of people would call the lilly collaboration a giant flop - not enough supply, way too much demand, and a website that leaves a lot to be desired - i'd call it almost genius.  there are a ton of people who had no idea who lilly pulitzer was before this week, and i'm willing to bet that there's been a lot of traffic on her website and in her stores.  

and for the jerks who stampeded into the store, swept entire racks into their cards, and promptly went home to list it all on eBay - well, i just hope that the vow many have taken not to touch your listings will hold up.  you've got about a week left before you can return things back to the store, and i hope those listings go unsold and you end up having to slink your sorry asses back into target to get your money back.  and maybe the folks who really wanted these things will get to snap 'em up at the actual retail price vs. the inflated numbers you hoped to get.

hmph.