Recap: Madison Warehouse Sale

The trendy boutique Madison is having a warehouse sale at the Barrington/San Vicente location until 3/29 (see BargainsLA for details). I didn't have very high hopes, since I knew that things tend to be expensive even at 60-90% off...the 90% off items are probably the super-expensive stuff. However, I was in the area on Friday for something else, so I thought I'd stop by to take a look. Street parking was pretty horrendous as expected; I went through multiple side streets on multiple passes and came up empty. I was about to snag a spot on Barrington when an SUV in front of me suddenly started to back up. Since I didn't want to make another go around the block, I turned onto a narrow side street near my "stolen" space, where I luckily found a space, and it was actually really close to where I needed to be.

I went into the store and it was fairly packed for a Friday afternoon (gosh, don't people have to work or something?). There were lots of boots, including some really cute Michael Kors wedged ones, at 60% off. Unfortuantely, they were waaay out of my league. As expected, there were lots of expensive tops and bottoms from See by Chloe, Matthew Williamson, Development, Pegah Anvarian, Ladies of the Canyon, etc. Even the "cheaper" ones (a pile of tanks and tube tops by James Perse, Vince, Free People, etc.) were $18 and up. Some designer jeans were $60 and up, which are priced OK for what they were (much better than retail, but definite not cheap).

The best buys turned out to be the shoes. There were loads of Marc Jacobs (the shoes are so cute in person!), YSL, Dolce and Gabbana, Sigerson Morrison, etc. Sure, they're all a couple hundred bucks (the lowest prices hover around $125, with the exception of cute Sigerson Morrison "Rain or Shine" skimmers that were $50), but that's pretty good considering how hard it is to find designer shoes at a steep discount. For cheapskates like me, there are flipflops from Mella and Yellow Box ($17) as well as checkered Vans slip-ons for $20. Original retail was listed as $80, if I remember correctly. $20 is fairly reasonable, considering I chided my sister a few weeks ago for spending $40 for them at the mall. I thought about buying a pair of Vans with orange and purple checkers, but wisely decided to save my money for something that's more "me."

There were lots of merchandise and most are expensive (though heavily discounted), so if you have the money and this sale seems to be your cup of tea, there should be plenty of goods left for you still. It's just not people like me who demand a really low price.