The shame of walking home after a night spent elsewhere is visible in mascara-smeared faces across campus on any given weekend morning. These “shackers” are easy to spot with their club-dress and high-heeled outfits contrasting the normal apparel of the college majority.
With the help of a new product, however, students familiar with such humiliation can walk home with their heads held high.
On March 1, a company called Clubsmerch based out of Miami Beach introduced a “Walk of Shame Kit.” Marketed equally to guys tired of lending their clothes to departing women and women tired of borrowing, the kit includes a cotton dress, sunglasses and flip flops.
“It’s a great thing for girls to keep in the back of their cars,” said Lindsay Goldstein, co-developer of the kit. Women without cars can carry the kit with them, or more practically, guys can keep one in their rooms.
This latter instance is the motivation for the kit’s inclusion in many of the best hotels in the world. In Las Vegas, for instance, the Hard Rock Hotel features a customized kit as an in-room mini-bar item. “Our big push is hotels, they’re kind of our demographic,” Goldstein said.
Indeed, everything in the kit can be branded with logos of the hotel or nightclub it’s being sold in. Generic versions of the kit are sold at boutiques and concerts.
Clubsmerch, which is approaching its one-year anniversary, threw some philanthropy into its new product as well. One dollar from each kit purchased will be donated to various breast cancer foundations. “We also donate kits to breast cancer events,” Goldstein said. “We want to raise awareness as much as possible.”
The kit includes a bracelet that reads “Imagine a Cure.” Also included in the kit, which is available at walkofshamekit.com for $34.99, is a backpack for the previous night’s things, a pre-pasted toothbrush, hypo-allergenic wipes to remove makeup and a notecard to leave behind with space for a name and phone number.
Ben Brown can be reached at [email protected].
