Bergdorf Blondes

I don't exactly get the whole celebutante thing. I don't watch the reality tv shows about their lives and families. I don't click through on the internet to read about anything they are doing. I don't wish them ill but I truly don't see why anyone cares about their lives. Sure, they live what looks to be an impossibly different life from the rest of us but I can't imagine it's really all that fascinating in truth. And I certainly wouldn't want to live it. But a light and frothy book about a fictional young Bergdorf blonde and the life she leads among the celebutantes and glitterati of New York like in the re-released Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes, well, that I can stomach, especially when it's presented as the funny and light weight show more entertainment that this fluffy chick lit is.

Our unnamed, brunette narrator, who calls herself Moi and has been described in a society column as a champagne bubble of a girl, is a fashion magazine writer but her nominal job doesn't often interfere with the privileged life of luxury she is leading. She's best friends with the original Bergdorf blonde, Julie Bergdorf, and inhabits a world of high class parties, drivers, private jets, wealth, and competitive shopping. When she and Julie notice how being engaged brings a new glow, unachievable through make-up and Botox, to their friends' faces, they set out to snag their own fiancés. But the course of true love never does run smooth and it's no different for Moi. She makes terrible choices in men, all the while fending off her mother's insistence that she meet the "little Earl" who owns the manor home in Moi's small British hometown. Meanwhile she gets engaged to an emotional wacko and proceeds to date married man after married man. Much to her chagrin, each time she gets herself into a relationship pickle, Charlie, one of Julie's more charming boyfriends, comes to Moi's rescue.

The life that these pampered princesses lead is an unbelievable one although I suspect that Sykes has, in fact, captured the Park Avenue Princesses fairly true to life. Even with Moi, who is not of the same class as her friends wealth-wise, there is little focus on actual, real workaday jobs. Moi has a job, of course, but she can blithely skip work to go to Europe on a whim with a handsome man with seemingly no repercussions and the rest of her twenty-something friends can afford to "work" as fashion muses. Moi is supposed to be an Ivy League graduate but she is shockingly dumb if that's the case, as is spectacularly evident in the Advil incident. The novel comes across as alternately satirical and straight so that the reader is never quite certain if Sykes is poking fun at this over the top lifestyle or not. Many of the characters are vacuous but still somehow come off as somehow not entirely unendearing. And because it is a ten year old re-issue, the pop culture references are decidedly dated, placing it firmly in its time. The end is completely predictable but as it's the way the reader wants the book to end, even if it is a tad unearned, that's okay. If you are looking for a guilty pleasure or are already a fan of celebutante "it" girls, this is the read for you. show less

Blissfully self-interested and flush with the cheeriness of a New York socialite on a quest to snag the perfect P.H. (Potential Husband): "Have you any idea how awesome your skin looks if you are engaged?"

It's impossible not to be entertained by a woman who refers euphemistically to oral sex as "going to Rio" in memory of the first man who suggested she get a Brazilian bikini wax, considers vodka a food group and is always embroiled in a nervous breakdown one after another.

I'd say that she's better than Bushnell in terms of writing style since the book's characters aren't ruthless, they're oftentimes charming and witty, and their very self-indulgence comes across as more amusing than petty. Sykes produced a viciously funny trip into a show more glittery, glitzy world we sure wouldn't want to live in but would be endlessly fascinated with.

Be warned though; in as much as I liked the book for some beach time reading, there's no character growth. No one ever learns to care for anything beyond men, clothes, and grooming, and yet, despite this, they're perfectly happy people.

Quoting Proust: "There is nothing like desire for preventing the things one says from bearing any resemblance to what one has in one's mind."

Book Details:

Title Bergdorf Blondes
Author Plum Sykes
Reviewed By Purplycookie show less

I've met more Bergdorf Blondes in my life than I care to remember. Being pretty much par for the course on the Island of Manhattan, they're everywhere - clogging up Fifth Avenue in their chauffeur-driven luxury cars, buying out Bendel's, Bergdorf's, and Barney's, and wearing purebred pooches on their arms as though the poor little pets were handbags. Needless to say, we are not friends. The Bergdorf Blonde bunch and I do not "get" each other at all; we're like peanut butter and potpourri. Still, I can't help but feel for them. Theirs is a strange, scary world, where nothing is more important than money. Not love, not friendship, not happiness. If you're feeling the need for a light, fluffy read that will make you grateful for the fact show more that you're NOT a Bergdorf Blonde, give this novel a try.
P.S: I'd recommend reading it for free, from the library. show less

This is chicklit with a Capital "C" no question. Froth of no redeeming value or character development and definitely not to be taken seriously. Chicklit is a genre I've been sampling by reading from a recommendation list and finding by and large I don't like. This one though, which happened to be on the list, was actually listed by a friend as one of three chicklit books that didn't "suck" and was "fun." (For the record, her other two picks were Carol Wolper's The Cigarette Girl and Leanne Shear's The Perfect Manhattan) I wasn't sure I'd find this one fun in the first few dozen pages.

This is set in a New York City I've never known--and I'm a native. One where "all anyone...ever says is everything's fabulous" and "everyone...takes calls show more from their beauty experts at social occasions" and waxes the inside of their noses and where "PJ is the quick NY way" of saying private jet. Who knew that a crosstown bus to the East Side could take me into a land more foreign than any overseas? One in which I doubt I have the right passport, but that's OK, because I have Plum Sykes, described as a "contributing editor of Vogue where she writes on fashion, society, and Hollywood" to take me into the exotic country of Park Avenue Princesses and Bergdorf Blondes.

The blonde not being the unnamed first person narrator but her best friend Julie Bergdorf, an heiress who makes me think more of Paris Hilton than Grace Kelly. Indeed, our heroine is actually a brunette and someone who seems rather ditzy for a supposedly Princeton University graduate and who breezily tells of her adventures with men she dates who turn into brutes as soon as they are engaged, are secretly married, or always-soon-to-be divorced Lotharios. There are even some nice guys--but even if their manner is informal or their shirts frayed they all turn out to be heirs underneath. Ah, East Siders. Their ways are not our ways....

However, I admit it--I was widely smiling by page 30 when the topic turned to "Brazilians" (note, not referring to natives of a certain Latin American country) and the book induced in me hysterical laughter (as in hard-to-stop tears-from-my-eyes kind) over a certain book club scene. Any book that can make me smile so often and even laugh out loud I have to give at least three stars. I would have given it at least a four, if the "advil incident" wasn't so eye-rollingly stupid. show less

I am sorry it took me so many years after publication for me to find this book. The Bergdorf Blondes is a really wonderful romp through socialite New York. The book follows the point of view of Moi, with her friends Julie Bergdorf (the queen bee of society), Lara and Jolene and may others. At some parts you want to laugh and ask yourself can anyone really be this shallow. They abbreviate everything including the word PH for potential husband. But, at the end of the day you really just do have to laugh about it.

Moi takes us not only into the world of the fashion obsessed “Princesses of Park Avenue” but through a series of her own very poor relationship mistakes. There is Zach, the moody depressing photographer who treats her like show more crap, who she almost marries. Eduardo the married, with children prince from some where or another, Patrick the married man with the psycho wife. And of course the very “regrettable” Charlie Dulain, who is Julie’s boy friend, or so she thought. You will get a few curve balls you didn’t see coming in this fun little run around the world, from New York to Rio and back again. I recommend reading this one if you want something easy, and something to lighten your mood. show less

I'm as fond of chicklit as the next person, but this just evaporated from my mind. If romantic fiction doesn't make you fall in love with the hero and yearn like Celia Johnson yearns in Brief Encounter, then what is the point of it?

Really good chick lit..okay the story tied up to neatly in the end, and we saw that final hook-up coming from a mile...but I loved the warped thinking of Plum's intelligent, fashion crazed protagonist. The nonsense this girl justified, will have you in tears.

If you love fashion, and adore Vogue for being Vogue, you'll be familiar with Plum Sykes writing, and hopefully you'll get the joke, and enjoy the fashion.