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I hope that you all had a bomb ass Thanksgiving holiday. I visitied my sister-in-law so that means that the food wasn’t nearly as good as I am used to. Homegirl will get there one day.

In the meantime I wanted to give you ladies an advance heads up on where to go to avoid some of the madness that is the Christmas holiday shopping season.

1) Avoid stores that Black people frequent. TARGET, TOYS ‘R’ US, and any sporting goods stores. I say this knowing full well that we Black folk are much more diverse than simply people that buy sneakers and too much stuff for our babies, but if you want to avoid the jig masses…

2) For big box stores try IKEA and BED, BATH and BEYOND. MARSHALL’s and T.J.MAXX coud also provide some great inexpensive gifts that have a high quality.

3) Ladies! By all means avoid CENTURY 21. From now until the 24th of December the shoe section in CENTURY 21 will be renamed CAT FIGHT ALLEY. You can only imagine why.

Much love goes out to NAJWA MOSES and the entire STYLEAHOLICS camp for the event that they put together on tuesday night at the Altman Building in Chelsesa. They dub their function ‘THE CLOSET’ and it combines two of my favorite pass-times: shopping and partying. I call it ‘backpacker couture’. You are surrounded by almost thirty of the hottest and most eclectic clothing designers as they set up shop in this gallery transformed into a dancehall. The designers chat it up with you. They take your kudos and your criticism. All the while DJ’s spin everything from rap music to rare grooves and Rick James. The cherry on top of all this was the two-hour open bar.

I have to admit that I slept on NAJWA and her camp but after I saw the whole page write up that this event had generated in the daily METRO paper, I had to reach out to someone to put the kid on the list. The crowd was as diverse as the designers that were being represented. If you are a stylist, an aspiring designer, or just a shopping maniac like me, get yourself linked up with NAJWA.