Fashion's New Tour Guides
Shopping tours, made over: New York fashion editor Sarah Gardner, gives a fashion hand
By Nancy Keates & Mei Fong

Friday, December 13, 2002: Weekend Journal

Elly Heap would hardly call herself hip but the fourtyish mom and her 16 year-old daughter recently spent an afternoon with a male model, drinking coffee and meeting some of New York 's fashion movers and shakers. Was she dreaming? No, she was shopping.

Ms. Heap paid GQ and Vogue poster boy Tim Durand $120 for a three-hour tour of stores selling brands like Prada, Louis Vuitton at 50% off. “How often, “asked the Louisiana accountant, “do you get a gorgeous guy who appreciates clothes to sit outside the dressing room and give his opinion?”

More often, it seems. Once confined to dreary buses, the business of taking tours shopping has reached a whole new level. With both tourism and retailing still struggling, everyone from runway models to fashion editors are leading around out-of-towners with promises of private sales, advice from Fashionistas and special entry into off-limit showrooms. One place, Fashion Update in New York , charges a $175 to take people to designer discounters and says it has tripled its tours to 100 a month.

Surprisingly, though, paying for a tour can actually translate into lower prices. On Friday last month, Eric and Hilary Rothman paid $175 each for a tour led by Fashion Editor, Sarah Gardner and gained access to a 22 nd floor midtown Manhattan showroom otherwise reserved for wholesale buyers. After an hour of looking through fur – trimmed, beaded designer gowns, the Rothmans picked up a black crepe number for $345 less than half retail.” This is our way of responding to economic conditions, “salesman Andrew Broysevicz said, as the Rothmans changed their babies diaper on the carpet.

HAUTE SHOP

With retail slumping and Fashionastas looking for extra work, shopping tours are in Vogue this holiday season. Heres a look at the offerings, from mall crawls to couture bashes.

Tour/Where held Cost Comments

Fashion Update $175/2.5 hours Sarah Gardner, a veteran that guide

(Burberry, Donna Karan), up to 70% off – but not straight from the runway.