Get ready NYC ’cause here come the girls...
Tonight, Matthew, I’m going to go off in my Dunnes finest but when I walk down the steps of the plane on a winter morning back in Shannon or Dublin I’ll be clad head to toe in Ralph, Tommy and Juicy Couture. I’ll stomp my way through customs, looking straight ahead for fear somebody might stop me in my Uggs, while concealing my new i-pod under my Abercrombie scarf.
It’s that time of the year again when the Irish head off on their annual pilgrimages to New York in search of cheap clothes, Christmas presents and, this year, Barack Obama merchandise.
But will they be held back by the economic downturn? Will the recession stop them in their tracks? You must be joking.
“The Irish are still coming here in their droves,” said David Connolly, a staff member at the Fitzpatrick Hotel in Manhattan.
“I don’t think the Irish will be a bit affected by the recession. They’ll never give up their New York shopping trips,” he said.
Magda Maloney, originally from Poland but now living in Meath, hit Abercrombie with her mum having heard so much about it from her Irish friends.
“It’s amazing. I’m just loving it here,” she said.
At Macy’s, I met Elaine Tierney from Limerick who travelled to New York with friends Norma and Susie. It’s the girls’ first time making the trip.
“We’re in our element,” she said. “I just can’t believe the bargains.”
As part of the feature I was assigned a photographer to work with in New York.
“Ok,” she said. “My brief is to get pictures of Irish people shopping, how are we going to do that? How’ll we recognise them?”
It turned out to be easier spotting the Irish in Macy’s than it would be spotting an Irish man on the beach on Santa Ponsa. They didn’t have the white socks, white legs and red faces. Instead, they were the ones with frantic looks coupled with sheer joy at being in the midst of so many good buys. Oh, how us Irish love a bargain.
