By Nicole Breskin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
MIDTOWN WEST — A Manolo Blahnik sample sale became a "madhouse" on Thursday after word of the secret event leaked out on the Web.
Manhattan's bargain-hungry fashionistas (and even a man or two) braved the freezing cold to line up outside the Warwick Hotel on 54th Street starting at 7 a.m. Eventually they were brought inside to a holding room to wait until 9 a.m., when the store opened.
"We were trying to keep it off the Web otherwise it gets overwhelming," said an employee of the exclusive high-end shoe retailer who declined to give her name. "We're a bit overwhelmed."
Late in the morning, roughly 200 women had turned up for the sale.
Women lined up shoulder-to-shoulder grasped at piled of discounted shoes — some marked down hundreds of dollars — arranged throughout the room. They were polite, but definitely eyed each others selections.
"It was a madhouse, totally crazy," said Jocelyn Levy, of the Upper East Side, who works for a PR company that has Manolo as a client. "But it was worth it."
Between her and her mother, who also came, she left with 10 pairs of shoes. Levy's favorite pair was a set of $2,000 black knee-high leather boots marked down $175.
Shoe shopper Mara Grobins, 31, of Greenwich Village, wasn’t sure what she wanted when she came to the sale.
“I was looking for that little extra detail that you can’t find in a more generic brand,” said Grobins. “But I didn’t say, ‘I want black pumps,’ because you don’t know if there will be any.”
In the end, Grobins settled on a pair of silver sandals with matching silver beading for $125.
Amid the women trying to catch a pair of "Sex & the City" glamour, there was a man. He was there to shoes for his wife but declined to give his name because he didn't want his guy friends, or his employer, to know he had skipped work to go to a women's shoe store.
"I come every year," he said. "There are really good deals."
Victoria Spencer works at a boutique nearby. She found out about the sale on a blog, and came to the hotel at 8 a.m. She left and came back two hours later. When DNAinfo spoke to her, her ticket number was about to be called.
"The hush hush factor is really exciting," Spencer said. "It's Manolo. I want to own at least a pair."
