A Garment District Jaunt From Hermès to Hawaiian Islands

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Welcome to Drunk Shopping, our feature celebrating the time-honored tradition of getting totally wasted while the sun's still shining before buying a bunch of debatably useful stuff that the sober you would be too timid or too restrained to take home. Each Friday we'll cobble together a new itinerary starting you off with a boozy Saturday or Sunday brunch before meandering through a few neighboring retailers and happy hours notable for seasonal specials, limited time availability, fantastic deals, recent openings, or new shipments.

Calling all horse owners: The Hermès sample sale is in full swing and saddles are only $25,000. We'll pop in and pick up a few this weekend, when we're Drunk Shopping our way through the Garment District West 30s, soaking up sunshine, the sales and the sausage. Yes, sausage: Brunch is happening at the Ace Hotel's Breslin—that meat-centric hot spot in the middle of a geographical not spot. Get the pastries to share plus an eggy, porky grilled cheese or a full English breakfast. Accessorize with a Rush of Blood to the Head (feel free to pretend Coldplay isn't awful while ordering), a brunch-right prosecco-and-blood-orange concoction almost guaranteed to provide the champagne high a person needs to start their day right.

After brunch you might as well peruse the latest offering's at the Ace's hotel gift shops—Opening Ceremony and No. 8a. How often are you on 29th Street? From there head north up Broadway—the Hermès sale is chugging along at Soiffer Haskin on 33rd Street. There will likely be a line, and deals are absolutely relative, but this is a New York sample sale rite of passage. So go buy some saddles.

Continue north—just have the saddles messengered or chauffeured, they're unwieldy and you have shopping to attend to—and visit the Garment District's two first designer boutiques, both of which opened late last year on 38th Street. Hit Nepenthes first for a complete assortment of Japanese-doing-American-better menswear (there's a bit of women's, too) from Engineered Garments and brand-brother Needles. Rounding out the house collections, check the assorted fetishistic heritage by Woolrich Woolen Mills, Mark McNairy and the like, as well as the fantastic assortment of vintage eyewear by Dior and Carrera.

Next: Yoehlee, designer Yoehlee Teng's first shop. Opened as a showcase for Teng's edgy womenswear, the shop also stocks a hand-picked array of bits and bobs from other labels like Bensimon. The shop, artful and a little gritty on purpose, is Teng's brick-and-mortar tribute to the neighborhood that produces her collection (her studios are right upstairs) and fosters New York fashion.

Finally, get back to fostering your buzz. It just so happens that one of the grossest, diviest tiki bars you've never heard of is just around the corner on Eighth Avenue. Called the Distinguished Wakamba Cocktail Lounge, this place has been around the block. It's not faux-dive, it's true dive—but also tropical (and, obviously, distinguished). Get a few super cheap, sickly-sweet somethings and ponder the juxtaposition between Hermès and Wakamba—only in New York!
· Dealfeed: Hermès [Racked NY]
· Critical Shopper: Nepenthes [Racked NY]
· Yeohlee Opens the Garment District's First Designer Store [Racked NY]
· All Drunk Shopping posts [Racked NY]