If you weren’t aware I have a problem. To some people (the workforce of my favorite department stores and boutiques) my addiction to retail is not a problem. But to my dreams of one day owning a town house in Russian Hill next to Gavin Newsom, my addiction is a baseball bat crashing through the perfectly placed stain glass windows.

Now if you thought my problems would vanish when I arrived to Shanghai, well you thought wrong. One of the things Expats deal with when they move to a place like Shanghai is the magnification of their problems. If you came here with relationship, family, self esteem, or (in my case) retail addiction problems the Shanghai sky magnifies them and unfortunately they don’t sell Retail Addiction SPF at Watson’s.

What they do have for those of us dealing with the desire and need to stuff our closets like a Thanksgiving Turkey is Fashion Week. Made famous by the tents of New York and the designers from Paris, Shanghai has conquered a week in the year to devote to nothing but clothes, fashion and the spending of my money. Because I have mastered the art of spending money in Shanghai I got a few invitations to a few shows here. The first of the fashion shows I hit up was for designers Sury and Kay who have a couture line of dresses and a great boutique here in Shanghai.

On a typical Saturday afternoon out I came across their store and befriended Sury, who happened to be visiting the store for the day. She took my name card and swore to contact me. Weeks later I got a phone call asking for my address to send my tickets to the show!

Through those tickets I managed to leverage some additional tickets for JOG swimwear, a French bathing suit company and Enjoy Young China’s answer to Project Runway and my favorite of all the shows.

Enjoy Young is actually the name of a boutique that carries the designs of the contestants who compete on China’s version of Project Runway. It was exciting to see the looks of the potential next hot designer.

The clothes were edgy and fun and varied drastically like a bipolar house wife!! It was perfect!

My favorite was an amazing royal blue cotton and spandex dress with hot pink diamond-shaped fabric cutouts surrounding the skirt. Very geometrical and absurd in that way that makes it perfect. It was the kind of dress that made you wish you had the courage to wear others like it to get the attention and glory that comes with wearing a fantastic dress like it.

Another magnificent article, which I hope to add to my repertoire, was a hot pink toga style dress that almost looked like a perfectly scrunched and starched garbage bag painted hot pink and belted!

I must say there is definitely something magical about sitting next to a cat walk hidden by the darkness staring up at the bright lights and white walk way. I felt almost powerful, but then you have to get up and walk through the fluorescent lights of the lobby and you remember the reality you came from.

Needless to say for a short moment I felt the power in being an Olsen twin, in having fat greasy photographers take your picture and I mastered the hungry face of “Ohh that’s nice, I’ll have my stylist pick that out… in a different fabric of course!” Ahh to be an Olsen twin!