By Mark La Monica
It would be highly unAmerican to not enjoy free stuff with no catches.
Here in Fashion Land, you can't walk 20 feet without having someone hand you something. Bottles of Aquafina. York peppermint patties. WE bags. Fashion Week magazines. Notepads from Pantone.
After a John Belushi training table breakfast of three peppermint patties and two bottles of Aquafina, I began the quest for knowledge. Just how many of these things are given out for free each day in the name of marketing and brand building.
Lauren from Aquafina estimated about 2,000 12-ounce bottles per day, which seems fairly accurate.
A lovely young lady from the WE booth reports that 625 of their now-famous red WE bags are rationed out each day.
Now for these patties. April Henry, a vivacious "singer/songwriter/actress" from South Florida, could not approximate a number. But she took it a step further. She went by weight, which is an amusing category to sort by at a fashion festival.
One box weighs 20 pounds. About one-quarter of that box fits in her pattie bag. Quick math says that's five pounds. There are at least four people with these pattie bags and one dude working with a pattie tray. They fill up several times a day. So we're talking roughly 50-60 pounds of delectables being dished out to passers by. That's a lot of peppermint!
But what is a singer/songwriter/actress doing dealing in patties? "The experienciality of it," she said.
We both agreed that wasn't a word.
"But that's truthiness, so it's OK," I responded.
Props to Stephen Colbert for that conversation-sparker.
For those not under the spell of Comedy Central's Colbert and his hilarious show The Colbert Report, truthiness is basically defined as something you believe and want to be true even though it isn't.
April and I continued to chat about patties, about life. She got all Brooklyn on me, so I had to return fire and get Long Islandy. I demanded she bring me some patties and an Aquafina whenever she sees me writing. I'm 1-for-1 so far.