Buttoned-Up Freebie

Last night, lovely L and I attended the Brooks Brothers Holiday Party extravaganza in midtown NYC. As expected, it was a mob scene.

The entire men's store was decked from top to bottom. This is a shot of the first floor, where they had open bars, hors d'ouvres, giant urns full of candy canes and Brooks Brothers Hanukah gelt, employees dressed in four-plaid pants (yes, four plaids on one pair of pants!) and a stage for performers:

If you rode the escalators up to the children's floor, every surface was covered with gingerbread (check out these Brooks Brothers gingerbread people!):

Also upstairs, Marlo Thomas was reading from her new book, and they offered the kids an ornament decorating station.

After our initial egg nog (delicious - see beverage station pic below),

We headed around the corner to the Women's store, where we took a photo with Santa (a very classic, classy Santa too), witnessed four Edwardian carolers singing their hearts out, and encountered a cookie decorating station.

Then we dashed back to the Men's store in time for the cast of Billy Elliot to perform some holiday carol medleys:

All in all, this event was just huge. There was so much going on, but it was very crowded. Here's my breakdown:

Food: A-minus. The high-point were the mini latkes, but they also served sliders, pigs in blankets, mini pizzas, doughnuts, sugar cookies, blondies, brownies. There was simply just a mad rush to any person with food that made getting the food tremendously unpleasant.

Drink: A-plus. A host of options: warm cider, egg nog, apple martinis, white wine (no red, because, as one server pointed out to a man "This is a clothing store." (???)), and pellegrino.

Entertainment: A-plus. We couldn't even stick around for Winton Marsalis and the Harlem boys/girls choirs because we had dinner to eat. The Billy Elliot kids were adorable, there was an awesome jazz band at the women's store playing in front of Santa, and the Edwardian Christmas Carolers were a neat diversion too. For the kids, the cookie and ornament decorating stations looked really fun. And though we didn't get close enough to SEE Marlo Thomas, we could hear her and that's pretty cool she was there!

Swag: A. No gift bag or anything, but we were able to walk out with some specialty Brooks Brothers gelt, as well as a really cute/odd pic of L and me sitting on Santa's lap.

Don't forget to vote for our Quote Vote at the top right of the blog!