Star's Clothing Line, Bitten, Goes on Sale And Bargain Shoppers Scratch Their Itch

NEW YORK, June 7 -- As celebrity arrivals go, this one was relatively low-key. The crowd waited quietly Thursday morning for actress Sarah Jessica Parker at the debut of her new low-priced women's clothing line, Bitten. The security guards were more quizzical than stressed and the only thing the small army of fretful promotion people had to get into a tizzy over was the best way to hand out gift cards.

Parker emerged from the back of the Steve & Barry's store in Manhattan Mall at 9:25 a.m. and the crowd of approximately 175 people outside the store cheered and raised their cellphone cameras in salute. Professional photographers demanded she turn this way and that way as their flashes fired. And Stephanie Sanchez, an 18-year-old from the Bronx, began jumping and squealing in the time-honored tradition of an overwrought fan who has been standing in line for more than 12 hours. "I have all her seasons of 'Sex and the City,' " she said.

The actress smiled, waved, mouthed hello and then got out of the way. (She was scheduled to return several hours later for an autograph signing.)

The gates came up at 9:30 and customers galloped across the threshold. Within 30 minutes, they were weighed down with blue mesh shopping bags stuffed with merchandise, wooden hangers poking through the holes, eyes wide in search of more stuff.

Daughters lost mothers in the chaos of bluejeans for less than 15 bucks. Jennifer Colonna, 20, stood off to the side shouting directions into a cellphone for her mother, Patty Colonna, who had disappeared into the crowd. Jennifer is a petite blonde who was rendered immobile by two overstuffed shopping bags of clothes, a couple of canvas tote bags and a Sarah Jessica Parker poster.

"Come over here!" she pleaded into the phone to Patty, 53. "I can't move."

She likes Parker, but she likes shopping more. "I'm a little addicted."

The technique under these circumstances -- the crowds, the euphoria of being first through the door, the low prices -- is to grab anything remotely interesting. Try on nothing. Bootleg jeans for $14.98, a black cotton shirt dress for $19.98, sneakers for $9.98. Customers were sweaty, disoriented, breathless and grabby, grabby, grabby.

"Grab six of 'em!" screamed one woman to her friend as they stood in front of a display of T-shirts.

"Oh my God!" exclaimed another woman upon realizing the vastness of the collection: sportswear, shoes, jewelry, panties. "It's everywhere. I'm so overwhelmed right now!"

Parker has been on the buzz-generating circuit for months, including an appearance on "Oprah." All along she has been proselytizing about how unfair it is that fashion should be available only to the well-off and the thin. And so, following the example of the NBA's Stephon Marbury, who collaborated with Steve & Barry's to create a basketball sneaker for $14.98, Parker lent her name and -- she says -- her aesthetic sensibility to a fashion line in which nothing is priced above $19.98 and the sizes range from 0 to 22.

The collection is called Bitten because Parker was "bitten" by the Steve & Barry bug after visiting one of the stores. The line is a collaboration between Parker and the sportswear retailer, where it is sold exclusively.