How Target’s Designer Collaborations Fueled My Bad Shopping Habits

Target is celebrating 20 years of its Design for All program by bringing back some of its greatest hits this weekend. On September 14, it will reissue 300 items in housewares and apparel.

This is not a post about how groundbreaking Target was. (For that perspective, you can read this story in Vogue.) Yes, it was the first major retailer to highlight the work of designers, bringing their designs to the masses — and in at least once case, even to a designer’s own family members. Phillip Lim posted on Instagram recently about how “it wasn’t until my collaboration with Target that my mother fully understood what i was doing with my life!” (Ahhhh, this is the cutest! As someone from an immigrant family who didn’t become a doctor, lawyer, or engineer, I can relate.)

And yes, I, a person of the masses, ate it up. I especially loved it since I was already interested in design. I got to own things dreamed up by designers whose regular line I couldn’t afford. And I also learned about designers I didn’t know about like Dror who made a clever housewares collection for Target that was all about transformation. (The pieces, such as nesting shelves, literally transformed, perfect for small spaces. I still have the clock from this collection.)

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From the beginning, I was a fan with my Michael Graves for Target butterfly mop and my Isaac Mizrahi for Target sheath dress. I shopped the women’s capsule collections back when Target called them Go International and the sizing was juniors. When a TV commercial featuring Tord Boontje’s holiday housewares collection came on the TV, I gasped. (I bought the dishes, using them year round for many years.)

But this post isn’t about that.

No, this post is about how designer collaborations fueled my bad shopping habits. (Which of course is my own fault.) I bought way more stuff than I ever used or kept, especially when it came to clothes.

Because the collections were limited edition (in so far as mass-produced items can be limited), this encouraged a shopping craze. I’d buy things just to have them and then take my haul home to deliberate. This resulted in lots of buying and returning. I spent a lot of time chasing down items. As the collections became more of a known thing, shopping them became increasingly competitive. (And then the eBay vultures swooped in, buying up merchandise and setting up shop online for ridiculous sums.)

By the time of Jason Wu’s 2012 French-inspired women’s collection, I’d joined a Facebook group of similarly-obsessed Target fans. We shopped for each other, listing our desire for sold-out items on spreadsheets. That way, we’d know what items to keep an eye out for as we stalked returns at our local stores.

I, not a morning person, lined up at Targets before they opened to be among the first to shop a collection. I did this after staying up and waiting for the items to go live on the Target site so that I could snag things online. In a single day, I visited multiple Targets. I knew this was nutty behavior but I couldn’t help myself.

2013 was perhaps the height of my craze as I bought some 20 items from the Prabal Gurung and the 3.1 Phillip Lim collections. (Double or triple that if you count the things I bought for people in the Facebook group.) I even bought things just because they felt hard to get a hold of, and then convinced friends that they wanted them. (In the end, I only kept five of those 20 items.) Even in 2017, the year I started this blog and when I was already trying to cut back on my shopping, I failed to behave during the Victoria Beckham launch. After reviewing the look book, I told myself I was interested in only one thing, but then I got sucked in.

To be sure, some things I used with love. I toted my black rectangular 3.1 Phillip Lim bag around until the magnet in the closure came unglued, then superglued it back on (not once, but twice). (I’m still using it though the end of its life is nearing. When it goes, I’ll look for a similarly-sized bag of higher quality.) I’ve moved my Philippe Starck magazine rack from apartment to apartment. There’s a black cotton Thakoon sweater with slight balloon sleeves and a cutout in the back that I wear often in the fall.

There are also things that I would have kept using, except that I couldn’t. That Michael Graves butterfly mop? Eventually, Target stopped selling it and I couldn’t get my hands on any of the mop head replacements. I threw out a perfectly usable mop because I couldn’t get a crucial part. (Learned my lesson there! Don’t buy something that needs replacement parts unless they’re easy to obtain.)

Mostly, though, I bought things, too many things, and then ended up donating or selling the majority of them (hello Poshmark store) — sometimes with the tags still on.

Now that I have a better handle on my shopping habits and value quality over quantity, I regard these collabs as a kind of emotional manipulation. Like sales, they create a false feeling of scarcity. This thing is only available for a short amount of time. If you don’t snag it now, you may not get one.

And I try to remind myself of following, which is pretty much how I approach anything I consider buying now:

• Do I really like this or am I just caught up in wanting to collect? If this item didn’t have a name to it, would I still like it?
• How likely am I to wear or use this?
• How does it fit in with the rest of my wardrobe? Is this my style?
• What materials is it made out of it? (I try to stick to natural fibers these days.)
• How is the quality and construction? Is this item likely to last or will it fall apart quickly? (Note to self: Target handbags are generally not well-made, so don’t buy them no matter how cute!)

I also try to remind myself that if I’m not sure about something, I can think it over. And if I really want it later, I can always track it down second hand when the madness dies down. (That’s how I got this Zac Posen brocade dress.)

With these questions in mind, there’s only really one thing in the reissue that I’m curious about: this Thakoon shibori print shirtdress (or maybe this black version of it). Of course, there are preowned ones from the original 2008 release on resale sites. I might try on a new one just for sizing and if I like it, buy one that’s secondhand. (I’m tempted by this adorable Isaac Mizrahi square neck dress, but I know it’s not my style and I probably wouldn’t wear it more than once.)

I’ve noticed that it’s mostly the clothes I’ve gotten in trouble with. Housewares take up more space so I tended to think more carefully before buying them. With clothes, instead of confronting my overconsumption, I switched to slim hangers to stuff more into my closet.

I’ve come a long way since 2013. By mid-September of that year, I had bought about 60 items of clothing in general (designer collab or not). This year, as I’m chronicling in my shopping diary entries I’m at nine.

Has a designer collaboration ever swept you up in a craze?