Swag: the Ugly Betty way

I have a new guilty pleasure: the TV show Ugly Betty. And for the unitiated, tonight's episode was definitely the perfect one for me to watch. The title? "Swag," about a fashion closet being cleaned out of all its contents to make way for the new season's worth of clothes and accessories. With the opening shot of assistants and editors trampling poor Betty to raid the closet, it begs for various points of reference in the real world of fashion...

The first point: there is swag and then there are samples. Swag arrives all the time in the shape of a shirt, cd, bag, etc...to even a goody bag. This is free stuff that frankly you can do whatever you want with. Take it home, put it on the giveaway table, save it for your nanny or maid at Christmas time (of course you don't really have to because at Christmas you'll have enough extra swag to give to your maid and nanny as well as for all your friends' and neighbors' maids, nannies, hairdressers, doormen, postal workers, sister-in-laws, manicurists...you get the message).

Samples...well that's an entirely different story. Samples are housed in what is called "the closet." Just like in Ugly Betty, just like in The Devil Wears Prada. But one thing on TV that is NOT a reality: There is NEVER a ceremonious "emptying" of a fashion closet to make way for new things. As each sample arrives at a magazine, it is checked in, placed on a rack or shelf and then either picked for a shoot or returned to the vendor. When the season ends these samples are wrangled up by each fashion company and then sold at a discount price at what is familiarly known as a "sample sale."

What was shown on TV is what looks more like a sample sale. Or it resembles the mass hysteria that takes place when the only department that partakes in ceremonious emptying of its wares...the beauty closet....holds its quarterly purge of products. Of course in the real world all the lotions and potions are priced at a buck a piece and magazines make generous donations to female-oriented charities. In Ugly Betty? It's a free-for-all. If life was really all that glamorous!

Which brings me to another point. If a magazine such as Mode on Ugly Betty had a free-for-all of old samples, including a current season Gucci, there would be hell to pay! Such is the case for a few, greedy editors, one who was at W, another at Marie Claire, who sold or "lost" current samples (read: sold or stole). Let's just say they were escorted out of the buildings stat.

And then there's the recent assistant beauty editor who called in expensive products for a bogus shoot so she could sell it on ebay. Instant termination from the Conde Nast building.

Of course what Ugly Betty does in her fictitious way...it's a hoot. When Betty *spoiler alert!* sells her real Gucci to the pharmacist and bank rolls her father's prescription, gets a fake Gucci from her ex and then sells that one to a snotty, gay male co-worker...well, it's priceless retribution.

The other story line on Ugly Betty was about expense reports. Classic. There's so much juice to talk about that one that I'll have to save it for another post. Let's just say that *spoiler alert!* putting plastic surgery on one's corporate card isn't something that Hollywood made up. But good for them for revealing the true, "ugly" underbelly of the fashion magazine world. Hooray for Ugly Betty!