My quest to score some Versace For H&M at Palm Beach Gardens Mall today began with the best intentions. I ardently studied the collection for several days on my H&M iPad app. I was trying to come up with a game plan. If I went straight to the men’s department, I’d miss out on any shot at the women’s line on the second floor. I really wanted the accessories. But when I arrived at the store this morning in Palm Beach Gardens, I quickly realized I was already too late. I had no idea there would be wristbands until I looked on HM.com the night before. I was starting to feel like I didn’t know what I was getting myself into…and man was I right. I arrived at H&M a little before 8 a.m., which was when the doors were opening. I didn’t know all the wristbands were already distributed and that people had been waiting there since 4 a.m. Ironically, many of the people who were waiting were wearing items from the Missoni For Target collection. The only prayer of getting in there was if someone gave me their wristband. Fat chance of that. So, instead I relied completely on fate. I ran into my friend Joseph Quinones who had arrived at the store with my other fashionable friend Gino Campodonico at 5 a.m. Joseph was so sweet, he let me purchase a palm tree sweater he decided not to get. Score! A couple hours later, all the wristband people had shopped and there were only a few pairs of shoes left. All the clothes and accesories were gone:( Then, a kind woman who I had never met before did the unthinkable. She handed me a pair of shoes in my size I so desperately wanted. She snuck them to me over the metal barricade like a piece of religious contraband in a communist revolt. 
The middle of H&M looked war torn. I was however excited to see Sex And The City stylist Danny Santiago shopping for pieces behind the barricade.
But on the down side, as more and more Versace For H&M disappeared from the store’s shelves, women were getting really, really bitchy. A few more accessories were placed on a table in the middle of the Versace section and the women actually jumped on each other in a designer dogpile. Security guards were trying to break it up. And they warned shoppers “If you have any of these Versace items, hold them tightly. People are trying to take them.”
After I had finally scored my coveted size 10 silver stilettos, an obviously jealous empty-handed shopper came over to me and said “Can I see those?” I handed one shoe over (keeping the other as collateral so that she wouldn’t run off with my golden prize) and she snottily said “I wouldn’t be caught dead in these. Here you go.” And I simply smiled at her and replied “Honey, you can’t handle walking in my shoes.” For more on my H&M adventure, stayed tuned for the next Glamazon fashion column in City Link magazine.
