This Isn’t Just Shopping, It’s Female Bonding

It’s the Super Bowl of shopping, but longer, and without those Lycra pants, unfortunate shoulder pads and excessive grunting. It’s what one customer termed “a unique gathering of women.” It’s the three-day January Allen Allen USA catalog overstock warehouse sale.

To walk into the makeshift outlet in a Huntington Beach strip mall last weekend was to witness Her Land. Women were piled into the cramped space, in jeans or leggings or tennis clothes, weaving through the rows of Allen Allen basics arranged by nearly edible colors (chocolate, bayberry, herb and an unwearable creole) and fabrics (velvets and satins by the window, denims on the back wall, cashmere toward the register).

This was a public event, and yet there was something conspiratorial about it. “My husband is at Sears buying a washer and dryer,” admitted one attendee. “He said, ‘Don’t you want to come with me?’ I said, ‘I have an appointment.’ ”

We nodded. We understood.

It took strategy to maneuver. Some women formed tag teams--one person held a place in the register line while the other shopped. With some prices slashed from 50% to 70%, the linens were a must, but everything looked so “darling” and so “cute” it was hard to leave anything behind.

And so, little was. Arms sagged under merchandise. No one minded; carts, like air-conditioning, represent overhead. There was no music either, and that was OK too. You wouldn’t have been able to hear it over the whining or screeching or bawling of the children anyway.

The children scampered among the racks. Their chaperons all had the same name, Mommy--as in “Stay with Mommy,” and “Be good for Mommy.” And these women were always searching, sending up a lilting roll call of popular names: “Chase?” “Dylan?” “Miles?”

We came with friends, but we made friends too. In the dressing room, we were so close, we had to speak. “You’re so skinny, you could wear anything.” There was no privacy, just rejected clothes and mirrors leaning too low against the wall. But we didn’t need the mirrors because we got live, on-the-spot opinions (“That would look good with leggings”) and candid advice (“Could I wear ballet slippers with this?”).

We chatted in line. Waiting for a register is just another opportunity to shop, to rethink keeping the butter fleece polo over the doe fit-and-flare jersey dress. And getting closer to the register only brings you closer to the reality of how much you’re about to spend. So the shedding begins. The perfect racks of color become mussed with strays.

We arrived at the register happy. We took a copy of the catalog, even though we already had one. We paid, murmuring that we had spent too much. We laughed because we know we’ll be back for the summer sale.