Women's Lifestyle April 22, 2026 0 Comments

Why Shopping’s Turned Into the Ultimate Adrenaline Rush—And These Super Shoppers Are Crushing It Like Pros!

Ever caught yourself wondering why some people chase fashion treasures like it’s a life-or-death mission? Well, meet Bianca Jebbia—a woman whose first brush with the Marni Spring 2003 collection didn’t just ignite a style crush but sparked a relentless pursuit of sartorial gold. Picture this: the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” blasting, chrome rails showcasing clothes like museum exhibits, and a 20-something retail salesperson secretly dreaming of living the high-fashion dream rather than just selling it. Fast forward years later, and Bianca is deep in the trenches of supershopping—where finding that elusive jacket or vintage Chanel piece is less about retail therapy and more about adventure, obsession, and an almost spiritual commitment. But this isn’t your average mall run; this is a high-stakes game of stealthy reverse image searches, midnight WhatsApp whispers with sales associates, and globe-trotting sneaker chases—all thanks to a culture that’s redefining what it means to shop in the digital age. So, is intense, borderline “insane” dedication the secret sauce to fashion’s holy grail, or just a sign of shopping gone wild? Stick with me—this one’s a deep dive into the fierce, fascinating world where style meets strategy and obsession wears a designer label. LEARN MORE

8 min read

The White Stripes’ anthem “Seven Nation Army” never fails to have a Proustian effect on Bianca Jebbia. Every time she hears it, Jebbia flashes back to the first time she walked into the Marni boutique on Mercer Street in New York. More than two decades later, she recalls entering a futuristic gallery of fashion, with clothes suspended from chrome rails as seriously as fine art, and Jack White screeching on the stereo—as he was in most places circa 2003—and being struck by an immediate, almost cosmic certainty: “This is what I want to be when I grow up.”

By this she means not just a woman who wears Marni but an actual item from the Marni Spring 2003 collection. For Jebbia, this was love at first sight. But alas, it was unrequited. At the time, she was a 20-something salesperson. She sold designer retail; she didn’t shop it.

Today, Jebbia is a Chanel-collecting fixture in the front rows of Schiaparelli, Chloé, and Junya Watanabe with the resources—and the drive—to hunt down treasures from fashion’s past and present. She reminisces about “the ones that got away” as wistfully as one might recall a formative lover. It’s not just Marni; Jebbia has “a guy” who sources her spiky-kneed leather pants from Undercover. On 1stDibs, she tracked down Chanel lederhosen from the 2014 Métiers d’Art collection—because, she says, “Why not sit around having coffee at home in lederhosen?”

Model showcases red and white checkered dress on a runway.

Guy Marineau

Comme des Garçons Spring 1997

Model walking on runway in a fashion show.

Victor Virgile

Balenciaga Spring 2002

Call her a supershopper: a new, ultradetermined breed for whom tracking down items new and old has become something more obsessive than a mere pastime. It’s more like an Olympic sport—and the more elaborate, time-consuming, and überniche the chase, the better. Is the item in question sold out? Supershoppers don’t take no for an answer. Is there only one left on the planet and it’s locked in a Siberian warehouse guarded by rabid dogs? Supershoppers play the long game. After all, nothing ever became a holy grail by being easy to get.

In this world, there are no mere shopping transactions where you walk into a store and plunk down a credit card. Where’s the fun in that? These are retail quests full of twists and turns, hidden passageways, and secret handshakes. There are reverse Google image searches using highly specialized search terms, eBay notifications, watch lists on the RealReal, Meta resale groups, and auction houses. WhatsApp messages are swapped at all hours of the day and night with luxury retail sales associates (“SAs” to those in the know).

You might be a supershopper if you find that intel gleaned from the chat of a favorite shopping newsletter has led you to a website you’ve never heard of and that—even after you investigate—you only vaguely comprehend. (Take, for instance, buyee.jp, a “proxy service for Japanese bargains.”) Nevertheless, you boldly enter your credit-card number and press “buy now.” After all, you’re thisclose. What are you going to do—stop there?

Another sign? When you find yourself regaling your friends with rich stories of your latest conquests—the retelling itself being a new badge of honor. In supershopper culture, it’s not just about how you look in these garments, it’s what it took to get them.

Fashion model walking in a library setting.

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Chanel Métiers d’Art 2014

Fashion model wearing a unique dress and shoes on a runway.

Penske Media

Balenciaga Fall 2010

People are always asking me, ‘Oh my God, how do you find this stuff?’” says fashion writer Emilia Petrarca, creator of the popular newsletter Shop Rat. “My answer is always the same, which is that you have to be insane. I’m up early, I’m there first, and that’s how I get all my stuff—because I’m completely nuts.”

When we speak, first thing on a weekday morning, Petrarca is only partially caffeinated, yet she has already scoured every shopping link in her inbox and Googled the price of tariffs on a green knitted poncho by a brand called Cecilie Telle that she was thinking of having shipped over from London.

Time and space are no obstacles for a true supershopper. Photographer Tommy Ton recalls visiting family in Bakersfield, California, when he learned that Balenciaga was holding an exclusive sale of Nicolas Ghesquière–era treasures back in New York. He dropped everything, jumped on a two-hour bus to a red-eye flight, landed at 7 a.m., and by 10:30 had snagged three pairs of Fall 2010 Bakelite heels. Ton completed the whole journey in reverse and got home a day later—footwear in tow. “My family was in complete shock,” he says.

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Prada Fall 2017

Professional fashion sourcer Gab Waller enjoys the hunt itself as much as (or more than) the item it yields. The L.A.-based Aussie made a name for herself among clients like Marianna Hewitt and Sofia Richie Grainge for her almost magical ability to unearth items that no one else can, like the Chanel 25 bag or the new Celine belt with the oversize buckle. “I feel most rewarded when I find the item, as opposed to when the client buys it,” Waller says.

What feels new, Waller says, is that, thanks in part to ever-advancing shopping technology, it’s not just insiders who will go the extra mile. More and more, “regular people” are not only sick of wearing the same thing as everyone else, they’re also, she says—perhaps ironically—turned off by the wild overconsumption so often celebrated on social media. Devoting serious time and effort to finding a single coveted item is consumerism, to be sure, but it’s also restrained and highly specific—the opposite of the “haul” mentality.

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Clockwise from top left: Rachel Tashjian, Tommy Ton, Gab Waller, Emilia Petrarca, Bianca Jebbia

achel Tashjian, CNN’s senior style reporter and a paragon of deep-dive shopping, sees another potential virtue in the approach. Is it healthy for shopping to take over your life? No, she says. Go read a book. But can these extreme shopping habits reflect a new kind of consumerism that is aspirational in its own way—maybe even vaguely ethical, for prizing off-the-beaten-path sources and “if you know, you know” uniqueness?

Per Tashjian, as millennials moved away from the pale-pink sameness that defined their generation’s early aesthetic, they developed in its place a new culture of seeking. Obsessively digging to find that perfect item for one’s home or wardrobe, one that feels unique and individual, could be considered an act of self-expression, a way to differentiate, to refine how we want to be perceived.

“These days, you don’t want the cashmere sweater that everyone has. You want the really strange, special cashmere sweater,” Tashjian says with a laugh. “The one you happened to discover driving down the road in Scotland and bought from an old woman in a hut.”

You could read this as a rejection of the kind of low-effort, algorithmically driven shopping—that frictionless scroll, click, buy, repeat—that we all fall into from time to time. Supershopping is an intentional and time-consuming process of curation in which the friction (by contemporary standards, the annoyance) of having to work to get something is at least part of the appeal. It’s the antithesis of double-clicking to buy whatever new thing Instagram said you needed.

“You have to be INSANE. I’m up EARLY, I’m there FIRST, and THAT’S HOW I get all my STUFF—because I’m completely NUTS,” says Emilia Petrarca.

In her newsletter, The Love List, Jess Graves coaches readers to think like supershoppers: how to navigate Net-a-Porter’s rewards tiers; which in-the-know SAs will hook them up. (Not one to gatekeep, she’s happy to name names: Grace Turner at the Row, Manny Suero at Mytheresa, David Broggi at Violet Grey.) “Our chat on Substack is full of people being like, ‘Here’s my sales associate at Saint Laurent.’ ‘Hey, does anybody know the email for the Row sample sale?’” Graves says. “People are becoming more and more resourced, because shopping requires it.”

Perhaps this new expertise is the fashion version of DIYers learning how to plumb their own bathtubs via YouTube tutorials. Sooner or later, the internet makes everyone an expert. It also created a home for every niche interest and made our options limitless. “It’s like you go on a dating app and have way more options than you ever used to,” says Graves. “The internet has made it that way for shopping. There are endless rabbit holes to go down.”

You could argue technology has also made more basic necessities almost too readily available. When Amazon delivers the new bestseller we want to read or the French moisturizer we want to try straight to our front door in less than two hours, that’s convenient, sure. But is it also a little…deflating? The item arrives before desire has even had time to build. With no anticipation, is there any excitement?

Model showcasing a fashion outfit on a runway.

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Dior Fall 2000

Fashion model showcasing a unique outfit on a runway.

LAUNCHMETRICS SPOTLIGHT

Versace Spring 2026

We can thank Covid for putting more shoppers on a first-name basis with sales associates. With no shows to attend, lines to wait in, or boutiques to trawl, designer-hungry hordes were retrained to shop via text and DM. That sped up the fashion food chain. “SAs are the real insiders,” Waller says, the ones with access to the real ungettable “gets.” Now, when the most coveted goodies arrive, SAs put them on hold for VIP clients.

“My Instagram boomed during Covid. That’s when I hit the ground running,” says Marci Hirshleifer, an elite shopper from way back. As the global personal-shopping director of family-run multibrand store Hirshleifers in Manhasset, New York (think Chanel, the Row, Khaite), she will hunt down anything a customer wants, even items the store doesn’t stock. When one client was obsessed with a pendant that Hirshleifer’s aunt Lori wore on Instagram, Hirshleifer went into overdrive, putting out the word to her network of stylists and personal shoppers that she was in hot pursuit of a vintage Cartier Snoopy pendant. She set alerts on 1stDibs, Sotheby’s, and Christie’s. And when the bauble finally popped up at an online European auction house, she texted her client, who was on vacation: Should I bid on it? The answer, of course, was yes.

Udo Salters Photography

Telfar Spring 2026

As for Bianca Jebbia, she doesn’t call sales associates SAs, perhaps because she used to be one of them. She refers to them as “my people.” They are guests at her dinners and birthday parties. She prizes these relationships, not least because they are the sole conduit to the many “extras” rarely seen outside of runways and photo shoots. Take the four pairs of tartan tights she picked up from Daniel Lee’s debut collection for Burberry. “Those weren’t Wolford. They aren’t Falke,” she says. They can only come straight from the house. For Jebbia, a fashion completist, these details are an essential part of nailing the look.

In November, a friend of Graves posted a photo from Preclothed, the vintage shop in Paris’s sixth arrondissement where the owner told her Mary-Kate Olsen sourced the delicate vintage hair combs used to style the Row’s Summer 2026 lookbook. The photo showed Olsen’s reject pile, plus a few of the combs she’d actually used in the show. Graves, who is getting married this summer, asked her friend to return to the store and ended up buying three combs for her rehearsal dinner. “I would never have been able to do that,” she says, “were it not for the extraordinary abundance and connection of the internet.”