Smart and Sarcastic With Dashes of Insanity: Orla Kiely Sample Sale Report June 2014

Hello peanuts,

I'm just back from the Orla Kiely sample sale. The sale is taking place from today, June 5 through Saturday June 7. The sale opens every day from 11:00 am through 7:00 pm at 5 Mercer St between Grand and Canal. I was at the Natori sale this morning but I didn't feel up to covering it fully. I try to only cover sales that you still have to time to shop and sales that I can give you a full picture of. That is why I did exhaustive reconnaissance for this multi-brand sale.

First, let's get all the basic information out of the way. There is no coat and bag check. As far as I can tell they've simply set up the regular Orla Kiely store for sale. There are also no dressing rooms. This is crazypants. There is no place that's even curtained off and the mirrors are in the front of the store. While I was there, a random dude came in the store. Not cool. I asked and was told that they will not be restocking unless it's to replenish the merchandise that's already and that there will not be any markdowns.

OK, now we can get into the actual sale. Each brand is conveniently sectioned off and sizing, pricing, and merchandise varies greatly from brand to brand. Let's start with Orla Kiely. I did not look at all the bags, because I was trying to not go insane, but all of the bags I did check were under $200. Obviously larger bags will be at the top of that range. Wallets and smaller purses were more in the $40-67 range and there were also two boxes with damaged bags. I rifled through the boxes but I couldn't really tell how they were damaged.

This olive colored Small Jeanie Bag was $110.

This olive Medium Laptop Skin was $55

This navy Make-up Bag was $45.

There was a table in the middle of the store with bags that felt a little cheaper and plastic as well as various wallets.

The wallets seemed to be priced differently based on size and material. The two pretty patterned ones in this photo were $67.

These bags were different from the rest because of their shiny finish. The leftmost larger bag was $187 and I assume the red and mint bags were similarly priced.

The damaged wallets box seemed to have been ransacked.

The damaged bag box was considerably fuller. You'll find purses like the one at the top of the pile as well as larger oversized bags.

Now, as for Orla Kiely apparel, that is arranged on racks that run the length of the store. At the moment everything is nicely organized by color. Again, I wasn't able to check all of the tags, but I checked most of them. The most expensive items I found were a dress and a jacket both priced at $199. Most of the dresses are $179 with a limited number of cheaper styles. Skirts were in the $139 range. There were some jackets as well but I wasn't really paying attention to them. Style and material varies greatly but sizing actually didn't favor sample sizes for the first time... well, ever. All the clothes I saw were size 8-14 with a surprising number of pieces available in sizes 10-14.

I know it doesn't look like it in the photo, but these items are actually bright pink.

$179 dress size 10

$139 Cloud Organza skirt size 6

Now to move on to oliveve.

These wallets/clutch purses are less expensive than the Orla Kiely ones on the adjacent table. All the tags I checked were marked $20.

There were other sizes of purses priced differently based on style. As with the Orla Kiely section I don't believe anything was over $200.

There were more bags to be found in the Hayden-Harnett section. Here, you'll have to do a little bit of math. All the items are 75% off the marked price. You have a few items here in the few hundred dollar range and some that are less than a hundred so pricing varies greatly. With bags topping off around the $400 range, it puts these sale bags mainly in the $100+ range.

There were some leather bracelets in this section. The embellished ones are more expensive so prices go from around $10-$25.

I thought the Family Affairs section had some cute items though it's not really my style. Pricing is very easy in this section. Dresses, rompers, and jumpers were $80. Tops, bottoms, and bikini sets were $60. Anything in the bargain bins were $30.

The bargain bins in this section mainly contained bikini tops and what I assume were bottoms. I don't know how well they'd function as swimwear so I might be mistaken. There were also a few pairs of pants. Nothing really worth trekking out to the sale for.

The dresses were another story. While they're not really my style, if you do like them, there's a nice range of patterns to choose from and sizes actually range from S to L and again, there are more than a few L's.