The Near-Nightmare in My Sister's Closet

A few weekends ago I went to one of my favorite clothing stores in Scottsdale -- a consignment boutique called My Sister's Closet.

The place is an answer to most women's prayers. They buy and sell "gently used" name-brand and designer clothing, shoes, handbags, jewelry, sunglasses, etc. And I am telling you, this store is a gold mine -- provided that you never go in looking for a specific sort of item. You have to just be ready to see where the shopping trip takes you, so to speak.

I went on a Saturday morning -- in fact, the Saturday morning the shop was unveiling all their new fall inventory and everything in the store was discounted even more than usual. I figured it would be worth checking out.

When I arrived, I was immediately overwhelmed. Here was my beloved, usually casual consignment boutique swarming with 100+ crazed women.

For probably a solid 10 minutes all I really did was wander the store from one end to the other, back and forth, weaving in and out of people and watching in semi-horror the chaos that was taking place. I honestly had a woman lean in front of me and step on my foot in order to snatch a top she thought I might be reaching for. (I wasn't.)

After I finally snapped out of it, I got down to business. But while other girls were grabbing animal print blouses and coats that looked like carpet bags, I was perfectly fine sifting through whatever GAP articles had come in.

I should confirm that I am, by no means, a style snob, although, thanks to nearly three years in the Scottsdale area and a year and a half working for a fashion mag, I do, for better or for worse, now know Burberry from Tod's and Alaïa from Diane von Furstenburg. It's not like I studied the labels, it just kind of happened. Kind of like how when I used to work at the Oklahoma Aquarium in Jenks, a byproduct of my job was that I learned the names of all the fish and could start telling the individual sharks apart from each other. Yeah, it's a little like that. But I digress ...

I have absolutely no shame in admitting that I love MSC both because I like nice things and I am frugal. Aren't a lot of other women out there, too? But on this most recent trip to the boutique, I rediscovered that there are different categories of frugality when it comes to Scottsdale women.

For example, I am not frugal in the kind of way that makes me feel obligated to buy a really hideous dress just because it's a marked-down Missoni. I don't consider buying an ugly, $1,000 article of designer clothing on sale for $200 to be coming out on top. I am more the kind of frugal that says, "Hey, isn't that the Banana Republic jacket I was looking at in the store window last year? Wow, it's only $17.50 here. I'm taking it."

Although there were women who staggered up to the checkout counter with both arms full, I walked away with only three things -- a white organic cotton cardigan knit in a lace pattern with a drawstring waist, as well as a light blue T-shirt with small flowers sewn on to one side of the neckline, both by J. Crew, and then a really lucky find: a black, sleeveless V-neck top with satin trim by Marciano by Guess.

The total cost of my purchases? $5 and change, thanks to some store credit I had after taking them some of my jeans at the beginning of the summer.

And on that note, happy Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week -- New York's annual celebration of all types of fashion, both beautiful and ugly.