By Greg Maxwell

Club Barneys
Bargain hunting at the sexiest warehouse sale in town.

Her bra was black and her panties were blue. I know this because she took off her clothes at least four times in front of me. She wasn’t a stripper. She was one of seven or eight women—among them my girlfriend—trying on clothes at the Barneys Warehouse Sale last week.

New Yorkers know about Barneys. It is one of the world’s premiere designer clothing stores. It’s also one of the more expensive. Shoes can sell for $500 a pair, dresses go for $2500 and men’s suits average about $1500.

Except during the warehouse sale. For two weeks at the end of August and for two weeks at the end of February—though this season’s sale ended on March 9—Barneys marks down just about everything in the store by at least a third.

The warehouse is located on W. 18th St.; it’s a huge building, perfect for a sale like this. But it has no changing rooms, so people get naked. And they’re not just women. Downstairs, in the men’s section, men drop their pants with only slightly less abandon than their female counterparts.

We shopped first for me, then for her and were treated to an exhibition during both legs of the journey. Our observations confirmed what artists have known for millennia: the female body is beautiful, but the male is not.

"Look at his butt," my girlfriend said as a middle-aged man stepped out of his khakis. "It’s horrible."

We were between racks of men’s suits. Before us was a second man unbuckling his belt. He was younger and better looking—or at least he was until we saw the explosion of hair bursting out of his underwear.

"I’m scared," said Tanya.

"You’re not digging this?" I asked.

"Girls don’t want to turn a corner and see a random naked guy. Guys are different. You see a naked woman and you’re all happy, like you’re still thirteen and watching Porky’s."

She was right. Upstairs in Women’s, we were browsing through the leather jackets. At the end of the rack a 25-year-old librarian type was cheerfully disrobing.

I couldn’t help but look. I then noticed she was one of a group of women furiously trying on piles of clothes they’d snatched off the racks. Their bodies weren’t perfect, but unlike the men, there was something alluring and graceful about all of them.

Tanya soon joined in, and was soon in her thong.

"I’m not paying $139 for pants that don’t fit."

Maybe it was the thumping house music, maybe it was the prospect of Prada for 60 percent off, but no one seemed at all uncomfortable.

Except me. I mostly looked at the floor.

We eventually made our ways to the check-out. "We’ve just visited the cheapest strip club in New York," I said to the cashier.

"You should have been here yesterday," she replied. "We had these models come in and they were buck naked, walking around, picking out clothes, laughing."

"Didn’t that make everyone else uncomfortable?" I asked.

"No," she said. "They were laughing too."