Bloomingdale's Inc.

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Saks, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, and Lord & Taylor are hardly bargain-basement stores. But anyone who's had to buy a Vera Wang dress for a wedding will be shocked in October when they get a look at the price-tags on Ms. Wang's new line of lingerie.

Of course, a month before that Ms. Wang will already have jumped into the pool with all the other big-name designers doing lines for budget stores; hers is for Kohl's.

"[Vera Wang products are] perceived as so high-end nobody can afford them," she told a reporter from Brandweek earlier this month. "It's very elitist that only certain people can afford those clothes and have places to wear them [like on the red carpet]. That's not me. In reality I've always been more of a democrat. I want women to be individuals and who they are as people. I feel like a very lucky girl that Kohl's is allowing me to reach a wider audience."

At a show for the new line of lingerie Ms. Wang's vice president of sales for lingerie put it a bit more baldly:

"Of course hipsters are very important," said Mollie Cutillo, vice president of sales for Vera Wang Lingerie. "The customer is young, or at least young at heart."

For under $100, hipsters who shop at Bloomingdales and Saks (?) will be able to pick up her new base line lingerie collection, which includes soft feminine cotton and chenille babydolls, bubble slips, foundations, robes and even tops translatable into day wear. The looks are based on the higher-end items in the accompanying Luxe collection. 

That collection will retail from $165-$375 and features silk, silk georgette, and silk charmeuse in intricate and delicate patterns: a babydoll v-neck with an empire waist; really long wrap robes; a bubble silk camisole is a delicate find under any blouse. There's not a lot of lace here, just to draw attention to some intricate details here and there.

Both collections favor contrast details like hand embroidery over the otheriwse popular tone-on-tone detailing. The new foundation collection, launching in July, is heavy on bustiers for Wang's already established A-list bridal and evening wear consumers.

"[Ms. Wang] felt like it was definitely a natural, next evolution," Ms. Cutillo said. "It makes sense if she's dressing the girls on the outside with her bridal gowns, and all that stuff obviously starts from underneath, foundation is just a given. When you're paying $5,000 for a dress it starts with the bra that's underneath it."

Azi, who's liveblogging the day's events in Albany, called to read aloud a few choice sections of the supporting deposition to Alan Hevesi's three-page plea agreement. This is the most interesting part, from the investigator on the case's description of his interview with driver Nicolas Acquafredda:

During the interviews of Mr. Acquafredda he admitted to providing healthcare related transportation services to Mrs. Hevesi. Mr. Acquafredda also advised that he provided services of a personal and a nonsecurity related nature to Mrs. Hevesi. These personal services included picking up dishes from the residence of Mrs. Hevesi's sister, driving Mrs. Hevesi to shop at Bloomingdales while Acquafredda stayed in the vehicle, picking up items at BJ's Wholesale Club, picking up, and dropping off items for dry cleaning, and other personal services.

-- Andrew Rice

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Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

• 1 comment

ERICA: I had my final fitting at Carolina Herrera today and I feel like I'm still floating on a cloud.

My dress is just so fab and dreamy. It's PURR-fect.  read more »

And somehow when I was there last week, I just wasn't feelin' it. I was out running errands and snuck in a dress fitting between returning an old pair of Spanx to Bloomingdales and meeting a friend for lunch. I was hot and harried and trying on a wedding dress was just about the last thing on earth I felt like doing. I had managed to remember to bring my shoes and underthings, but I forgot to put in my contacts. So there I was, standing there all hot and bothered in my chunky eyeglasses and this pretty pink dress. I looked ridiculous.

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