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When we arrived at yesterday evening's sample sale preview for The Kooples, we (like most of the shoppers) made a beeline for the leather, keeping our fingers crossed for the return of $295 leather jackets. Unfortunately, we were disappointed to find that prices in this category had jumped to $350, and that the selection didn't quite match up to the last sale.
Men still have a good number of leather jacket options — there are two full racks here, most of which are traditional black — but the options for women are pretty scarce. We only saw one classic black jacket, and the remaining versions, while cute, were limited to a handful of gray and tan styles.
Also missing this time around? The large selection of cute bucket bags (which had previously been only $65 each). We saw a small number of the PS 11-style leopard print buckle bags again, but we couldn't tell if they were priced at $65 or counted as leather bags, which went for $150.
Unchanged from last time? The predominantly French crowd, and the seasonally appropriate apparel and footwear. The puffers and parkas were replaced with light outerwear ($180), like leather-trimmed jackets and trench coats.
We also saw a lot of spring-ready knits ($65) and easy, slip-on loafers ($125), though we overheard shoppers complaining that they found the shoe selection underwhelming. The cutest women's styles — like cut-out, Western-inspired ankle boots — were primarily one-offs, and men had maybe only six styles to choose from.
New arrivals included the appearance of swim, where one-piece suits with a skull print were $50. In general, we noticed a strong skull motif, with tee shirts ($40) for both men and women featuring skull graphics.
Other items of note were multiple racks of suiting for both men and women, where jackets were $225 for men and $195 for women. This felt a little expensive to us, especially with outerwear going for $180, but this was the area of the sale with the largest quantity and widest variety.
We didn't get any confirmation with respect to forthcoming markdowns, but we did hear murmurs of additional shipments arriving, as well as backstock. Check the Dealfeed below for more info.