Capsule Collections Junking Up Various Storage Solutions in My House!

If you spend any social media time around self styled fashionistas I’m sure you’ve heard about the Jason Wu for Target drama involving a crafty pair who bought every stitch of the collection from a Miami Target store while onlookers whined, gnashed teeth and recorded the event. Capsule Collection is the preferred nomenclature for those limited edition fashion/beauty/home decor feeding frenzies which result in a lot of harshed mellows and heavy markups on ebay. I like the term, because you’re gonna need a capsule of something if some pushy shopper attempts to crack you upside the head with the Cynthia Rowley for Target “Swell” umbrella they just liberated from your cart, which oddly happened to me in 2002!

And who doesn’t love the idea of getting well designed, cute stuffs from people whose names you can barely spell, much less afford? Don’t misunderstand me; I’m not throwing shade at people who get excited about capsule collection, because well I have own capsule collection hall of fame and shame and the photographs to prove it.

Henri Bendel for Bath & Body Works

Upscale retailer Henri Bendel’s early 00s exclusive bath collection for Bath & Body Works looked curiously misplaced in a store perhaps better known for its super enthusiastic (read: pushy) sales folk and the smell of the never ending cagefight between stripper sweat – cucumber melon – and office coordinator at 9am – Japanese Cherry Blossom – for nostril domination. What drew my attention to the HB collection was its 75% off clearance price point. I hated seeing Henri Bendel go clearance in the ‘burbs, but the bargains were just too good to resist. Most of the clearance shelves had been picked clean of the candles – currently listed for all kinds of cashmoney on Ebay – leaving mostly an assortment of random products I couldn’t resist. The scent I chose – Vanilla Flower – captures the very worst of all the notes used! It is neither vanilla-y nor floral-y enough to please fans of either, but damn if I didn’t scoop up every single product, and for the cost of ONE CANDLE at retail price left the store with two medium sized bags loaded down with these attractively packaged products. Over the years I have used the lotion and shower gels as filler when I wanted to alter the scent of Angel Perfume, pawned unopened product on people I claim to love in a fit of discardia and quite shamefully used the perfume to kill blackflies and freshen up dank closets. What even got me to dig these products out to photograph/blog about was the seeing the body creme I couldn’t convince La Mommie to accept now going for serious cashmoney on ebay! There are 3 unopened boxes of that very body creme – aka my new retirement plan – in her bathroom.

Poketo for Target

I love surfing the Poketo website, yet the announcement of their collection with Target managed to escape me. Wandering around the clearance section one day I found a bunch of cute pouches, totes and whathaveyou priced between $1.74 and $3.74. I scooped up what was left and didn’t think much about it. I liked the pouches and needed them to continue to be a bags-within-bag person I am. It wasn’t until I found this post from the adorable blog MayDae and was all “ooh, she has the same pouches as me and does the bag-inside-the-bag thing too!” There isn’t much product on ebay so I’m not going to be able to fund my retirement on the few things that still have tags on them.

Tutti Dolci for Bath & Body Works

It was a perfect blend of pink cute things, irresistible gourmand products and yet another 75% clearance sale. Oh I actually adore these products both on the outside and the inside. The tubes of shower gel are long gone (in delicious flavors such as Angel Food Cake, Sugar Wafer and Chocolate Souffle), but I still have the fancy glass jars of chocolate bath souffle, angel food cake body creme, sugar wafer body creme and so on… The formulations are wonderful, slide on the skin and make me smell like a chubby cupcake! The lipglosses are divine (and were only $1.25). Those too are long gone. And as much as I adore Cinnamon Frosting Moisturizing Souffle when I run out, I’m just not sure it’s worth $40 to continue the relationship. And this bit of foolishness. I mean really. I liked the scent and the gorgeous packaging, but Calgon’s version of chocolate body lotion which is plentiful and $3.50 smells a lot better.

Cynthia Rowley “Swell” for Target

There’s only so much I can blame on “being in college” with regards to this picture. College and “Swell” are inexplicablely linked in my brain because it was so ubiquitous in my dorm decor, rain gear, dinnerware and just about everything else emblazoned with the iconic striped pattern. I used to dream in those stripes! The “Swell” collection transitioned me from college to my first home; each year my collection grew smaller until all that was left is a COASTER! The gorgeous TV tray in the pic was stolen off my back porch two summers ago. Damn, HIPPIES.

What about you? What cool items from capsule collections have you scored. Which ones do you wish you had? Are there any you didn’t realize were coveted until you happened to google them?