Thursday, June 28, 2007

Crabcakes & Eye Cream

Reporting back on yesterday's Ritz and Not Famous adventure....

First of all, I dug in my closet and found a shift-style sundress I'd bought at a street market a while back. I enjoyed the irony of wearing a $10 dress with a $250 pair of sunglasses. :) I bet I had on the only $10 dress at the Ritz that day (or ever). I'm surprised it didn't set off alarms when I entered the building. :)

As for my attention-seeking associate, she did not disappoint. She wore something cut way down to 'there' and way up to 'here', from Bed, Bath and Beyond's shower curtain fashion line. It was something that harkened back to the 60's, something I'd expect to see on a high school or college-age girl, and then only one who managed to get out of the house without her father seeing it. I was truly shocked at her fashion choice, especially given that she's in her early 50s. Usually, if you can remember the first time something was in style, you won't wear it when it comes back around the second time. My feeling is that it's something she wanted to wear as a young girl, but her mother wouldn't let her. Now, as an adult, it's back, and at last she has her chance, regardless of how ridiculous it looks.

The other ladies were dressed well, sporty, stylishly, and age appropriate.

We lunched on the outdoor patio overlooking the pool area and the Atlantic Ocean. It was a beautiful, tropical day, and it was fabulous. We ate crabcakes over greens and sipped peach martinis. Yum.

Afterwards, we wandered over to the center of Palm Beach to check out the shops on Worth Avenue. For those of you who aren't familiar with that, Worth Avenue is one of the most expensive shopping streets in the U.S. It's Florida's Rodeo Drive. Designer stores, estate jewelers, high-end everything. And I couldn't possibly buy a THING on most of that street, but it's fun to walk through and look at the shops and wonder what silly people are paying those kinds of prices for things. And now and then a celebrity sighting will occur (last visit, Rod Stewart), although we didn't see anyone yesterday.

We spent most of our time poking around at the sale at Neiman Marcus (the most affordable store on the block, yet also financial insanity). One of the ladies wandered through the cosmetics section and immediately became the hostage of flawlessly made-up cosmetic kidnappers, who took over her face and turned her into a glam queen. She did actually look great, and their scheme must have worked, because she ended up spending a fortune on the new makeup. It was not unlike paying a ransom to her captors to secure her own release. But she looked FAB-u-lous, darling! Worth the incarceration and money, to her, anyway.

I, myself, got sucked into buying the latest eye cream. It was far too expensive, but I must say that general consensus is that it works. The fine lines disappeared almost immediately. I wondered how they crammed a tiny little plastic surgeon into that jar, but apparently, they did. Either that, or someone behind the scenes was adjusting the lighting in the store as soon as that cream hit my face. (I wouldn't put it past them).

All in all, a good day. An indulgent day -- beach lunch, martinis, Worth Avenue and expensive eye cream. But you gotta have an indulgent day with the girls now and then. And my $10 dress enjoyed visiting some places it never thought it would see. :)

1 comment:

Miss Forthright said...

It sounds fab, M. I can picture the ocean view and the food- glorious.