.jpg)
Caron White, from Southampton, successfully bid for two items in the same auction. She paid 3p for the Chloe Mini Paddington, and 8p for the Louis Vitton Mini Pleaty handbags.
She came across the site when a work colleague forwarded a link to Charlotte’s Auction to all the women in the office!
WE LOVE CHARLOTTE'S AUCTION!
If any of you were wondering whether Charlotte’s Auction was too good to be true, it isn’t. I have the shoes to prove it…
The brains behind Charlotte and her auction, executive directors Melanie Rudd and Julian Sperring-Toy came to visit sunny Cambridge last week, to present me with the gorgeous designer accessories I’d won in the auction.
The reception staff in my office looked on with great curiosity as I was presented with two designer carrier bags, one emblazoned with the great words ‘Jimmy Choo London’ and another smaller, more subtle but highly covetable goodie bag marked ‘Tiffany & co’ Oh, bliss.
I felt like a little girl at Christmas, getting her first Sindy Doll. I would have said Barbie, but I was always a Sindy girl. My mother collects vintage Sindy dolls and would never let me forget it if I defected to the Barbie camp.
Melanie explained that she set up the business to run full time when she returns to England from Dubai to live. Charlotte’s Auction was the working title of the project, but it stuck. She is passionate about spending wisely and feels sad when she hears about women going thousands of pounds into debt, buying designer labels that they just can’t afford. So, Charlotte’s Auction combines a unique business idea with the sure-fire selling point of women’s love for shoes and handbags, and a social conscience.
The girls in the office were all intrigued when I returned to my desk laden with sparkly things, and I’ve been asked to e-mail the website details out across the office several times. Most of the guys in the office were just as interested, seeing possible brownie points being stacked up with wives and girlfriends.
The shoes are items of class and beauty, although destined only to emerge from their shoe box cocoon on very special occasions. I did consider wearing them to work just for the hell of it but thought that the walk from the station to the office would be spectacularly unpleasant in strappy Jimmy Choo sandals. And it was raining anyway. I have to admit to a sneaky parade around the kitchen in them when I got home.
The necklace is altogether more wearable, tiny and delicate and very sparkly. Melanie told me that it had come from Tiffany’s on Fifth Avenue, yes, THE Tiffanys in THAT film, one of my favourite films of all time. That just sealed it for me, and any suggestions from an unimpressed by labels husband that I put them up for sale on eBay was met with a plaintive, “But when am I ever going to be able to have a pair of Jimmy Choos – or own a Tiffany pendant from THE Tiffanys?”
He lost that one. I think he always knew he was going to.
