District Sample Sale offers bargain

Attention Washington shoppers! Spring’s fashion-themed fundraisers mean just one thing: Shopaholics can acquiesce to their base animal lust while helping local causes.

The March 18 District Sample Sale, the brainchild of Washington fashionistas, has become the place to shop and be seen shopping.

Its genesis reads like a fairy tale even “Confessions of a Shopaholic” author Sophie Kinsella could not concoct.

Liberty Jones, now public relations director for Neiman Marcus, was a boutique owner with an embarrassment of riches three years ago. Her dilemma? Too much end-of-season merchandise and too little room to store it.

Meanwhile, her friend Mary Amons, a charity fundraiser, was looking for “an alternative fundraising effort with a fashion focus.”

Ms. Jones assumed other boutique owners also had merchandise crammed in boxes and stored on open racks. Why not sell the merchandise at a fraction of the price, throw in some champagne and canapes, and earmark the proceeds for charity?

After a meeting to cobble together a plan in spring 2006 at the Peacock Cafe in Georgetown, a match made in charity heaven was born.

With the help of Jayne Sandman, Barbara Martin and Shannon Haley, the District Sample Sale was off, but not yet running.

“We had not a clue, but we had our ideas together,” Ms. Amons says.

The biggest obstacle was finding a venue.

“We wanted something urban, not too fancy, and a place that would give us a low overhead,” she says.

Ms. Amons ran into local real estate mogul Anthony Lanier at their children’s end-of-school-year picnic, where Ms. Amons, never one to let an opportunity slip away, “chatted him up about a place.”

Done and done.

Mr. Lanier has donated space for the event all three years. This year’s sale will be held at 3336 M St. NW.

“Anytime we can put some of our spaces toward a charitable use that additionally generates traffic for Georgetown, we are always delighted to do so, ” Mr. Lanier says.

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