This book was nearly offensive in its wanton display of greed, vanity and superficiality. It's almost embarrassing to even admit I read it, but as a follower of Sykes' Vogue pieces, I felt I owed her a bit of literary loyalty. Big mistake.
This book, sadly, confirms all those horror stories you hear about "Park Avenue Princesses," and doesn't even have the decency to laugh at itself at any point. Sykes is a clever wordsmith, but the meat of this book leaves much to be desired....like actual content. Waste your time elsewhere.

Fourth book read in my "gal about town" novels in NYC.

I'm fascinated at how people with such wealth and seemingly sophisticated lives could be, in reality, such trash. Oh sorry, when you reach a certain income level, you are "notorious" or "eccentric." The narrator, referring to herself as "moi" was as irritating as the little girl euphamisms given for such acts as "going to Brazil."

Worse yet, I saw the ending coming from a private jet across the Atlantic. Unlike "Save Karyn," where the protaganist grew up and learned something about herself, this character remained happily, hopelessly obtuse.

I went into Bergdorf Blondes hoping I was going to like it. I like chick-lit in general and am always up for a laugh. I tried to look at it as a tongue in cheek tale, but there really wasn't anything remotely funny about it. I got about 1/4 of the way through and I just couldn't take any more of the shallowness and greed of the characters.

Why? Where to start..maybe it was the main character deciding a fiance would make her skin look better. Or it could have been one of the characters freaking out because someone gave her a COMPLETE set of Beatrice Potter book for her unborn baby..ungrateful much? I think the last straw was the heiress who shop lifts at her own store and daddy is happy because the scandal boosts sales. Sadly, people like this probably exist. I couldn't even like the main character "Moi". What these characters need is a less money and a lot of therapy. I can't say I would recommend this book.

When I started reading this book it infuriated me! I felt like it was the biggest piece of nonsense garbage I had ever picked up and I was teetering on moving on....then I came to the "suicide" portion of the book and suddenly the book became very funny. Don't get me wrong, I was a suicide counselor for ten years and I more than anybody understand how serious suicide is, but this book made it so completely ridiculous it made the entire book make sense. It was supposed to be ridiculous, it was supposed to be shallow and maddening. But after reading the main character say (paraphrasing) "Wow, I didn't know you could commit suicide with ibuprofen, I wonder why more people didn't do it this way if it's this easy!" She then asks her friend how many would constitute an overdose and the friend says "Well anything over two would be an overdose I suppose" so the main character says "Well I'll take 8 just to be on the safe side" she then sends out her last will and testament via email and wakes up the next morning feeling quite foolish! :) At this point I saw the absurdity the author was shooting for and began to enjoy the book. The best advice I can give a person reading it is to not take it too seriously, it was never meant to be taken seriously and if you keep that in mind, you might just enjoy it!

Is another terrible novel that I'm dying to tell you all about. I'm sure this can't be healthy, but meh. Anyhow. This one was written in 2005 by a person called Plum Sykes (real name Victoria Sykes) who worked for Vogue magazine and lived in the shallow nonsense-fest that is the target market of Sex and the City - i.e. deeply unlikeable New York bimbos.

They say you should always write what you know. Based on this, I really, really, don't want to know the author.

Anyhow. My mother recommended this to me as something to execrate. So here goes.

Executive Summary

Poor Little Rich Girl, The Novel.

A bit more detail if you wouldn't mind?

Do I have to?

Alright, if you insist. Bergdorf Blondes is the tale of a woman who narrates this in the first person and is nameless. However, she tells us that she's part American and part British aristocrat - much like the author. That said, she has an increasingly annoying habit of inserting gratuitous French like saying how something is trés in or referring to herself as moi. And being the sort of stupid useless effort that anyone with an ounce of sense would have run screaming from long before. Her interests are, by her own admission, buying designer clothes, not eating, and attention whoring. And just plain whoring - she spends an inordinate amount of time trying to find a "PH" or Potential Husband who is suitably rich, handsome, and has a mutton mallet the likes of which you've probably seen hanging about between the legs of a Grand National winner.

This is also what everyone who the protagonist knows - "NY girls," she calls them - do also. We're supposed to think that being an astoundingly rich trustafarian in New York is meant to be difficult. All the social intrigue that isn't, society parties, and having "Shame Attacks." This is where you suddenly work out what a colossal skidmark on the dunghampers of humanity you really are and end up buying a DVD player. Apparently it's very expensive as you then end up having to spend money on therapists, alternative therapists, dermatologists (if the author is to be believed then there are designer dermatologists at which it is "in" to go), and general woo-mongers. I tell you, I wish I was a peddler of questionable psychobabble woo. I'd move to New York and, once I'd convinced the locals that I wasn't an Australian as they thought the last time I was there, I'd be rolling in money. Because of stupid airheaded bimbos like the protagonist/author (same person, I'm increasingly sure).

What she does for a living is write for a fashion magazine. I hate to sound like this novel is made of predictability, but she does. She also gives us an insight into the argot of NY Girls. Basically, everything is glam or icky, and if you're thin then you're "ana" and this is a good thing. Because every PH likes a woman that he seriously risks snapping in two while he's kicking her front end in, doesn't he? Sorry, did I say, kicking her front end in? I meant "going to Brazil," because all the NY girls have subscribed to that ridiculous fashion for bald genitals.

The low point for me had to be Chapter 6, where the heroine attempted suicide. To do this, she specifically got a one-way plane trip to Paris, bought a one-off designer dress so to do, and wrote a suicide note that made fascinatingly detailed teen angst bullshit day logs sound terse. Why do this? Because her fiancé had left her because he realised what a horrible waste of space she really was and he could do better with a woman who wasn't so superficial and overdramatic and emo. Ugh. She failed, of course, because we're less than halfway through the book, although it would have been a much improved book if she did succeed in rubbing herself out and the rest of it was blank pages.

No, she has to carry on annoying us with her plotless waste of time for page after page, chapter after chapter. I'm sure this will appeal to you if you like Sex and the City (and who does - I knew someone at university who was, by her own admission, SATC's biggest fan even though, also by her own admission, 3/4 of the episodes were pants. Why, I asked. Because of the couture. Ugh.) But there could at least be a plot, come on.

We're also treated to one of the single worst lines in any work of fiction I have ever encountered. This is up there with Torchwood's "When was the last time you came so hard, you forgot where you were?" and Fifty Shades of Grey's "He's no gentleman. He has my panties!" It really is. Want to know what it is? Well, you asked for it:

n  "Two croissants, two café lattes, two hundred kisses, and an absolute minimum of two very regrettable orgasms later, we were well entrenched into the bed in 606. I felt giddy with happiness. An orgasm really is the answer to almost every problem in life. I honestly believe that if everyone was having orgasms regularly, there wouldn’t be a Palestinian conflict. Seriously, no one would ever get out of bed in time for it."n

Note also the off-handed nod to the destined never to end conflict in the Middle East. This is an example also of the hidden depths that "moi" is supposed to have but which we never see. Informed non-superficiality, methinks. Apparently she went to Princeton as well. However this I can believe; I was at the University of London with a self confessed Sloane Ranger called Jaime, who would almost certainly love this book. But I digress.

The fact is, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to read this novel on any level. There are those who claim that it is a satire, however, I must respectfully disagree. The author is deadly serious. This is evidenced by the fact that she, Plum Sykes, is a real life "It Girl" and worked for American Vogue at the time this novel was written. She used her contacts in same to research these things, and her boss, the inspiration for The Devil Wears Prada, Anna Wintour herself, would not have allowed her to take the piss and remain employed. The protagonist also enjoys several commonalities with the author, at least according to Wikipedia, what with working in the rag trade, being half New Yorker and half British aristocrat, being invited to invitation-only fashion sales, and namedropping designer labels, repeatedly. She also, by her own admission in the afterword, did the research into the thread count of designer bedsheets and other such stuff that, to a fashionista, would be deathly important. So I am convinced that she is absolutely serious about this. It's just too obvious in that if it were satire or trolling, it would be deliberately over the top. This... isn't.

In short, this novel is one of the biggest wastes of paper I have ever encountered. There is nothing honest, meaningful, or thoughty about it in the least. It is just self pity and first world problems. As I said in the introduction, if the author wrote what she knew, I do not want to know the author at any time, now, or ever.

I love this book! I love how the author depicted a "Park Avenue Princess's Life" in the book. I also love how the author blended humor in the story. It was pretty hilarious. It is one of the books to read that I do recommend to girls who love fashion, glamour, and New York.

Socialistas. Glitteratis. Park Avenue Princesses. Very Upper East Side.

Read more HERE

I read this book yesterday. I couldn't stop once I started. I haven't read such a funny book in a long time. Bergdorf Blondes reminded me of the first Chick-lit books I ever read, Tiffany Trott and Minty Malone and Come Together and all those other British classics, only it had the all-too-wonderful extra ingredient, New York!

I loved every page! Park Avenue princesses with ridiculous concerns, who plot how to get the best out of a sample sale at Chanel, Front Row Girls, muses, waiting lists for designer handbags, fundraisers to save 'whatever' and such wonderful and extremely quotable quotes that I was laughing out loud almost every page.

The protagonist, known throughout the book as 'Moi' is a British girl who wants to be American, she escapes England, and a very snobbish American mother who is desperate to marry her to the Earl next door (in spite of the Chair Affair, due to which the families are sworn enemies), and comes to New York where she lives the 'Champagne Bubble' life of a Bergdorf Blonde(although she is a brunette who went to Princeton) with her best friend, the quintessential New York Park Avenue Princess Julie Bergdorf. They search for fiances (not husbands), go to parties, lunches, foreign cities, get heartbroken, get wonderful facials, start book clubs, and finally find love.

I thought the book was clever and hilarious..... I read many negative reviews, and they almost put me off reading what is actually the funniest book I've read in a long time. If you're going to go into this book judging fictional characters for being superficial, then this book is probably not for you. Maybe there are girls who fly around on private jets and think the most important thing in life is to be some fashion designer's muse, maybe that's superficial to you, but there's also someone who thinks you're superficial for having a gym membership when you could just maybe run to work. It takes all sorts to make a world.

Solid 3. Not bad but not amazing.

Ok guys this one is a throw back for me since I originally read Bergdorf Blondes way back in the summer college days, but I just found it and re-read it again this week and now I have a blog, so ya know: review yay! I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book. Seriously, on the surface it's a light contemporary funny read. Chick lit if you will. But for those looking there's a biting commentary below the surface. It's tres Austen-esque. How can you not love that? Also did I mention there's hot men? cause that. Also Fashion. Also NY. Also Britain. Need I continue? There's so many quotes in this book that got me through college and my early 20s it's bananas. It was practically my "how to be a 20-something in NY" bible when I graduated. I still consider myself a champagne bubble of a girl and that bit about crying into your martini glass, classic. Frankly if you like contemporaries or romances you should need to read this book. Fin.

xoxo

moi

Overall: A

CD/abridged/Chicklit: If you like Devil Wears Prada or the Shopaholic books, you will like this. My BFF loved it and lent it to me. Like her, I have seen the scorching reviews on this. It may be different with audio, but I loved it too.
Moi, her name never said, lives in NYC, wears designer cloths and is pretty shallow. She got it honestly. She gets into situations only a debutant could get into. Yes, there is a ton of designer and products named. But it is a fun book. Take it for what it is.

I forgot all about this book.. I wish she would write more books like this. I like sequels with the same characters transitions through life.. I get sad when some books end then excited seeing another story about them.. It was another easy book because the story was fun and i enjoyed her descriptive details. If your into fashion magazines, exspensive clothes, and hearing about what the stars do or how they live, then youll enjoy this and alot of the books ive read...ive saved alot of money buying one book compared to 15 gossip magazines and 8 fashion magazines a month!!!

If only I had read the reviews before I was more than halfway through. It was mildly amusing at a few points, but too predictable and scandalously vacuous. Oh well.