A Stella irony

Unless you happened to be blind, deaf AND living under a rock, no-one in Australia could have missed the story this week about shoppers going into a frenzy over the sale of a range of Stella McCartney's clothes at Target. Fashionistas who would normally die rather than admit they shopped at a budget chainstore queued for hours and broke into fist fights over the clothes. Within hours some of the key items were being listed on eBay for over-hyped prices. Read more here.

Today, five days after the shopping frenzy, I popped into Camberwell Target to check out their homewear sale and was surprised to see racks and racks of the Stella McCartney clothes on display. Clearly many of the items had either not been sold on the first day or had been quickly returned by shoppers. While there were no coats, there were plenty of the beaded olive dresses, silk tops, white shirts and black shorts, skirts and crop pants. Most of the small sizes had disappeared but there was ample choice for anyone sized 14-16.

The clothes attracted little interest from the regular shoppers beyond a curious "oh that's what all the hype was about" look. Many raised their eyebrows at the prices that may be a bargain by designer standards but are still more than double the regular price of clothes at Target. All in all, most showed more interest in the homewear sale.

For a moment I contemplated trying on one of the size 16 billowy silk tops that just might have fitted me. Then I looked at the colour (salmon pink) and fabric and thought about what I liked to wear. I decided to try on a regular Target brand purple cotton top instead.