Every year since 1959, Neiman Marcus has unveiled its Christmas catalog with a curated collection of outlandish “fantasy gifts,” the first being a prize Black Angus steer paired with a mahogany and silver roast beef cart (today’s value: $15,971).
Of course, creating fantasy gifts is more about earning press time than it is about making money off the out-of-this-world items. Surely no one expected Neimans to actually sell a $20 million submarine back in 2000 (it didn’t), but the retailer’s VP of Corporate Communications, Ginger Reeder, says she has long since given up trying to predict what will and will not sell. “I would have never thought the custom suit of armor would have sold and it did,” says Reeder, referring to a $20,000 wearable knight getup sold to the parents of a Renaissance fair enthusiast in 2004.
Reeder says the store usually sells three or four of its fantasy concepts each year. This year it sold 26 of the 50 Neiman Marcus Edition Infiniti Q60 sports cars ($63,000), 3,650 of Akola’s handmade “optimist” bracelets ($25), a walk-on role in the Broadway musical Waitress ($30,000), and a “week of luxe living at three English estates” (a whopping $700,000). Neimans also managed to sell one particularly interesting fantasy gift this year: a $120,000 sleepover at the retailer’s downtown Dallas flagship.
“It was suggested by an employee at our Michigan Avenue store in Chicago,” says Reeder. “And my daughter wrote a [fictional] story about being locked into Neiman Marcus when she was in the third grade. She accused us of stealing the idea from her!”
Though Neiman Marcus is not able to share the slumber partiers identities (all we know is that four women participated and the purchaser was from Florida), the luxury retailer did offer up a peek at the overnight fantasy experience.
So, do you want to know what a $120,000 Neiman Marcus sleepover looks like? Click through to get all details.
