gilt.com- by invitation only on-line shopping

Have you always wanted to be one of the privileged few invited to designer trunk sales and sample sales? Now, through the miracle of the Internet, not living in New York or Paris is not an automatic disqualification for the chance to wrestle over the to-die-for, and what a bargain! stylings of Judith Ripka and Alessandro Dell'Acqua. Thanks to gilt.com, if you can finagle an invitation to join, you too can shop with the glitterati.

According to Forbes.com, Gilt buys clearance items directly from the fashion houses. Unlike the in-person sales, though, there is no need to strip down to your panties to try them on in the aisle. In fact, you can't try them on at all, a major drawback for many. However, the chance to score designer goods at half the price or less has drawn over 75,000 people to join gilt.com, which is grossing over $70K a week. That's a lot of pheasant feathers and leopard-print.

You must have an invitation to join, a rather obvious way of giving the illusion of exclusivity. However, apparently a call to customer service is all that is needed to become one of those included.