Shop Chicago!
WHAT: Shop Chicago!
WHEN: Thursday, November 29, 2012 from 6pm-9pm
WHERE: Sydney Yates Gallery, Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St)
HOST: Time Out Chicago in partnership with Gilt City
OUR RATING: Skip it!
In celebration of the 2012 Shopping Awards and in preparation for the holiday shopping and gift-giving season, Time Out Chicago hosted their second annual Shop Chicago! Holiday marketplace a week ago today. The event featured nominees and winners from the 2011 and 2012 Shopping Awards.
–(photo courtesy of timeoutchicago.com)
As soon as we walked in the doorway of the Sydney R. Yates Gallery at the Chicago Cultural Center, we knew we were in trouble. Shop Chicago! was set-up in a single large room within the gallery, with vendors around the perimeter of the room, a few tables in the center giving out free glasses of champagne, and a live DJ spinning in the corner.. Why did we know we were in trouble? Small room, limited patrons, only a handful of vendors, and extremely large price tags. Not to mention the lack of ambience. We had seen the photos from last year’s event and we were pretty excited, but this year’s event lacked the aesthetic effort.
The first thing that really got us about this event was the price tag. Yes, you had to pay to get in! $15 to be exact. We’ve been discovering a lot of events like this lately, and while we were more than happy to imbibe in the complimentary champagne, we were stunned by the mere thought of paying to shop…just to pay some more if we came across anything we wanted to purchase.
So okay, okay, we’ll give the event some credit. Free champagne, nice and classy. And the vendors, along with their products, were pretty legitimate. We saw some beautiful collections, and we enjoyed chatting with the vendors and noticing the inspired branding of their products and their company titles, such as “Cities in Dust.” Other vendors included Milk Handmade, Alapash Home, LeThrift, The Haute Spot, Shades of Grey, Nac for Style, Mineralogy, Trillium, Fortunate Discoveries, Spare Parts, Study Hall, Exhale and more, selling mostly jewelry and clothing, with a few food and home goods items.
–(photo courtesy of timeoutchicago.com from Shop Chicago! 2011)
Unfortunately, due to the limited quantity of vendors and the small size of the room, we were able to traverse the entirety of the event in under twenty minutes, and while certain products did spark our interest, the high price tags ($120 for a bracelet?) turned us off. The vendors were young and hip, but did they not understand that other young and hip people in the city don’t have that thick of a wallet?
Obviously the event is meant for a very niche audience, so if you aren’t willing to put out at least a few twenties for a single item, we’d suggest skipping this event. And put the money it costs for admission into something nice for yourself (or your loved ones, of course) for the holidays. Or even a decent bottle of champagne, since that’s really all we got out of it.