Waiting For Fashion

(CBS)  The dreaded wait list is usually used to reserve a table at a popular restaurant. But these days, items such as a must-have purse can be wait-listed at a store near you.

Alison Brod is a public relations person, who knows what she wants. When she saw a Louis Vuitton bag in a magazine ad, she knew she had to have it -- even if there was a three-month wait for it.

"I put my name on every wait list in the country, not realizing that once I had given my credit card number," she says. "So, the day that my name actually came off the waiting list, I walked into my office to three bags."

Brod had $10,000 worth of Louis Vuitton sitting on her desk. It is a cautionary tale from the waitlist world. But it's no longer just for high end, hard to get items. At retail chain Club Monaco, dozens of men signed up for a $200 winter pea coat in August. Over 200 people were willing to wait months for a little bag named Debbie.

"When it's a hot waitlisted item, the phones start ringing about six weeks prior to it coming into the stores," says Club Monaco's Caroline Dogherty. "We get calls, people come in and they ask to be put on the wait list."

Customers may get the advance notice on the new season's items by using fashion magazines such as Harpers Bazaar.

"I saw it in a magazine, so I called to inquire what colors were going to be available," Stephania D'Angelo says of her interest in the Debbie bag. "When they said hot pink, I said, 'Ok, how can I get my hands on this bag.'"

Pink was also the color of choice for a GAP trench coat, and Scoop has had up to 10 things wait listed at one time, including Von Dutch hats, Jimmy Choo shoes, Marc Jacobs handbags and $48 C&C T-shirts.

"We have wait listed [the T-shirts] twice already," says Stacy Vale of Scoop. "The owner had seen them in L.A., bought the T-shirts for the store, we got them in, and a week later they were gone."

The fact that wait lists even exist is proof that people are willing to hold out for that one great item. But with so many other choices available, the question is why would they wait?

"It's just like the guy you don't really like until he doesn't call you back," Brod says. "It's that same concept … You want it because you can't have it."

Sometimes, an item becomes an obsession.

"They know they want gratification. If they see it, people get obsessed," Vale says. "They want it, they're willing to wait. They'll go here, they'll go elsewhere, they'll come back and they just keep waiting and waiting. And they can't get it out of their minds."

But if consumers can't get it into their hands, there can be a backlash.

"The downside to the waiting list is if you get annoyed enough after being on several waiting lists, you're not going to go back," says Marie Claire magazine's Lesley Jane Seymou. "The whole point is I should be able to go in and be satisfied. But if you're dissatisfied enough, you'll stop going there."

Most stores including Louis Vuitton, Club Monaco and Scoop say they never put someone on a wait list unless they are certain they can deliver the goods.