Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict by Avis Cardella

Tuesday, 03 August 2010 08:22

“Retail therapy;” “shopaholic;” “shop ‘til you drop”—all trendy concepts in the conspicuous consumption era that seemed to take off in the’90s. Who didn’t watch Sex and the City and fall for the fantasy of Carrie’s closet, before wondering how in the world a freelance writer in New York could afford those Manolos and that Gaultier? Well, it turns out, she couldn’t.

Story by Maghan McDowell

In Avis Cardella’s memoir Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict, out this month, Cardella—a real-life Carrie Bradshaw type who was a New York fashion writer when the term “fashionista” was coined—describes the events that led her to develop a full-fledged shopping addiction, going deeply into debt and sabotaging relationships in the process. In short memories and anecdotes, Cardella takes us from obsessively memorizing fashion photographs as a girl to eventually embodying the fashionista fantasy at New York Fashion Week.

She describes partying at Studio 54 as a teen (and notes that Andy Warhol was a compulsive shopper), and eventually being the lucky recipient of a doting (and wealthy) husband, eventually owning more Prada, Armani and Jil Sander than she could wear.

For anyone who has indulged in a flurry of breathless spending in hopes that their life will be that much more glamorous afterward, this memoir is a must. Although Warhol said that “shopping is more American than thinking,” and George Bush encouraged Americans to shop to show their patriotism, Spent makes us think twice before we crave something we can’t afford. Although the Sex and the City fairy tale looks nice, we’ll leave it for the fantasy of the big screen—and out of our wallets.

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