After walking out of Hermès, Liu Yue asked Sang Yu, “Can bags that were already reserved be sold to other customers? The sales associate never mentioned anything about reservations to us.”
She had walked out under that girl’s gaze, feeling like the woman’s eyes could burn a hole through the bag she was carrying.
…Even though Liu Yue hadn’t done anything wrong, she still felt a bit guilty about it.
Sang Yu: “Yes, that can happen. Hermès has very little ready stock, and there’s competition between sales associates too. If it were a BKC, they might be able to hold it, but dessert bags are harder to keep—after all, they can’t let walk-in customers see empty shelves.”
Wait, wait, wait—what was a “dessert bag” now? Liu Yue didn’t understand.
Sang Yu first explained what a “quota bag” meant—bags that counted toward your purchase quota. Customers had to accumulate a certain amount of spending first, buying enough ancillary items, before the SA would offer you the bag you wanted.
While waiting for the bag, the SA would offer customers other bags, as if to say “here’s a sweet treat” so you wouldn’t give up. Bags like that were collectively called “dessert bags.”
Liu Yue: “But didn’t that girl just say she’d been waiting for three months?”
“Dessert bags are relative to the harder-to-get quota bags,” Sang Yu continued to explain. “But that doesn’t mean popular styles don’t require waiting—it just means you can match them on the spot, pay and get the bag immediately, without having to buy ancillary items first and then wait for notification. That would be too passive.”
Liu Yue listened, utterly confused, and couldn’t help but deeply admire Hermès’s marketing tactics.
Such expensive prices, such complicated rules, and yet consumers still took it all in stride, rushing to compete for it. That was truly impressive.
“This bag is pretty nice,” she said to Sang Yu. “I thought it was just an ordinary paper bag, but it actually has pebbled texture on it. It looks really high-quality.”
Say what you will, but when it came to brand image, Hermès really did do a great job.
The two of them carried their bags toward Chanel, and Liu Yue asked Sang Yu, “Does Chanel require ancillary purchases too?”
Sang Yu: “Some popular bags do, but most don’t.”
Liu Yue said that actually, what she wanted to buy was clothes—Chanel’s most famous line should be their women’s wear, right?
Sang Yu’s pupils contracted slightly as she thought it over: “At this time of year… the Cruise collection should have already arrived. I’m not sure if the Spring/Summer preview has any new pieces yet.”
Liu Yue was undoubtedly a difficult customer to read, because she was carrying Hermès bags while wearing clothes that were clearly viral Taobao bestsellers.
Regardless, when she entered the store, an SA still came up to receive her. Upon learning that she wanted to look at women’s wear, the SA’s smile became noticeably more genuine.
Liu Yue’s first pick was a tweed suit. She tried on a gray tweed jacket with a matching skirt, and the two pieces together cost over a hundred thousand yuan.
In her imagination, she’d look like a wealthy heiress full of elegance, but reality was… why did she look so bulky in the mirror? And especially tacky too.
Liu Yue was devastated. She’d come to Chanel to buy the classic tweed look and it didn’t even look good on her—how could this be!
“It’s the clothes’ fault,” Sang Yu said promptly. “Tweed naturally creates a sense of volume, and when paired with a short skirt, the visual focus becomes more concentrated on the upper body. Unless you have an extremely slender, board-flat figure, it’ll make you look bigger.”
The all-knowing Sang Yu offered a solution: “Swap out the skirt and try these jeans instead.”
Liu Yue chose to trust Sang Yu’s advice. And sure enough—no, really, sure enough—the effect after the swap looked much better.
The jeans diluted the formality of the tweed jacket, and the high-waisted cut was very flattering to her figure, no longer making her look top-heavy.
Although her upper body hadn’t changed, once the visual focus shifted, that sense of “amplification” actually gave her great presence, making her look more mature.
So this was how you were supposed to style a quality jacket—lesson learned!
Liu Yue then tried on a white storm coat. The cut was slightly longer, but amazingly, it didn’t overwhelm her height at all. It even made Liu Yue involuntarily imagine a gust of wind blowing, the hem of the coat fluttering behind her.
Great, this one was nice too—buying it as well.
Following Sang Yu’s recommendations, Liu Yue also tried on a pink, shimmering tweed dress.
She’d initially worried the color was too bright and she couldn’t pull it off—after all, the last time she’d worn pink was in elementary school. But Sang Yu said her skin was fair and her features delicate, so she could absolutely carry the style.
Sang Yu’s encouragement gave Liu Yue a huge confidence boost. When she walked out of the fitting room and looked at herself in the mirror, her expression was almost dazed.
She was beautiful. She was vivid. She was radiant. Pink was eye-catching, but it was as if she was born to shine this way.
—Of course, this was an eighty-thousand-yuan dress. If it wasn’t eye-catching, what was?
Liu Yue genuinely loved it. She took photos of herself in the mirror, and in that moment, she even felt the impulse that if she didn’t have the Spending System, she would save up her own money to buy this dress anyway.
She was startled and quickly cast that crazy thought aside. It could only be said that the atmosphere luxury stores created for customers was truly easy to get swept up in.
Although these were ready-to-wear pieces, Chanel’s service was quite good. After Liu Yue tried things on and clearly stated she wanted to buy, the SA said they could do alterations to fit her measurements, and she could pick them up in about a week.
This made Liu Yue very happy, and once she was happy, her shopping desire burned fiercely.
Sang Yu had originally estimated how much Liu Yue had bought and thought her spending for today should be about done, but she didn’t expect Liu Yue to keep picking out more items.
That pink dress had opened the door to a new world for Liu Yue. She tried on a pink jacket, a purple skirt, floral-print dresses… and later returned to her usual black, white, and gray workwear preferences, boldly trying clothing types she’d never worn before.
Liu Yue tried on many outfits and bought everything she thought looked good. Sang Yu stood beside her pressing the calculator, and when Liu Yue felt too tired from changing clothes and wanted to rest, she silently showed her the calculator result.
Eighteen items, totaling 785,700 yuan, and Chanel never participated in any discount promotions.
Sang Yu was genuinely afraid Liu Yue had no concept of Chanel ready-to-wear prices and would forget her budget while shopping, but judging by Liu Yue’s expression, she seemed fine?
Liu Yue thought to herself that the System had already calculated it for her.
Adding today’s prices to her spending before today, it was only 865,748.6 yuan, still over 130,000 short of her million-yuan goal. She needed to keep buying.
But Liu Yue didn’t really want to keep trying on clothes anymore—changing in and out was genuinely tiring.
She’d originally planned to check out first, take Sang Yu to lunch for a rest, and then continue spending after eating. But as she passed the handbag section, she couldn’t help being drawn to a blue bag.
Although she’d just bought two bags at Hermès, one of which was blue… these two blues were different!
It was more vibrant than Santorini Blue, yet softer than North Blue. The sheen of this washed denim made Liu Yue unable to look away. Chanel’s colorists really had something special—it hit her right in the heart.
Liu Yue took a look—the large hobo bag was only a bit over 40,000. Buy it! If she liked it, she’d buy it!
Her SA walked over with a smile and grabbed the bag for her without a second word.
Liu Yue didn’t see anything wrong with this process, but another customer nearby complained: “Why does she get to buy it without purchasing matching items?”
Oh, so this bag required matching purchases?
Liu Yue had no idea what was going on. Sang Yu said from the side: “We bought a lot of tweed clothing.”
That answer made the questioning customer’s mouth twitch slightly. She said nothing more and turned to leave.
So that convinced her. Liu Yue curiously asked why.
Sang Yu: “The ready-to-wear line already holds a very high position at Chanel, and tweed is the pinnacle of their house. The bag she wanted to buy is only entry-level at Chanel.”
So it was perfectly normal that Liu Yue didn’t need to buy matching items for the hobo bag. Even if she wanted to buy a Kelly right now, the SA would arrange it for her immediately.
Liu Yue’s total at Chanel came to 829,000 yuan, leaving 90,951.4 yuan on her mission amount.
Actually, when she was paying, Liu Yue felt something she couldn’t quite put into words.
Over 800,000 yuan—many people wouldn’t earn that much in a year of work, and she’d spent it in an hour of shopping. And she hadn’t been reckless, hadn’t gone overboard buying everything in sight—she’d been seriously selecting pieces and spending.
So money really could just be a string of numbers.
Sang Yu asked her: “You suddenly don’t seem very happy? Was something unpleasant in the store just now?”
“Don’t worry—with your spending level, every time you come to Chanel from now on, the store will treat you as an important client. If you feel something isn’t right, you can tell them directly and have them correct it.”
Liu Yue shook her head. She didn’t feel anything was wrong—she was just in the middle of reshaping her view of money.
Sang Yu: “Come two more times, and the SA will probably apply for VIC status for you.”
Liu Yue asked curiously: “What’s the use of Chanel VIC status?”
Oh, the uses were many. Sang Yu told Liu Yue that once she became a VIC, the next time she came to Chanel, she wouldn’t need to queue, or even enter the store—she could go directly to the Chanel salon in the mall.
Whatever she wanted to buy would be displayed there for her to view and choose.
As a VIC, she might be invited to fashion shows and could purchase new items early. If she attended a haute couture show, that meant she’d earned the qualification to purchase and have couture made.
It was worth noting that even among couture houses, Chanel stood at the very pinnacle of the pyramid.
Of course, this VIC status had requirements. It might differ between stores, but annual spending needed to be at least three million yuan.
Sang Yu said the SA would likely apply for her because she could see Liu Yue’s sustained spending power.
Liu Yue was a bit surprised. She pointed at herself. “Do I look like someone who would spend a lot of money at Chanel?”
Sang Yu: …
With your attitude of buying one piece for every one you try on, picking out ready-to-wear like you’re picking out cabbages at the market, do you really have some misunderstanding about your own spending power?
Author’s Note: