What started as a litmus test to boost the slowed post-back-to-school sales of The Rock’s retailers is now an official must-shop calendar event. Six years in, and a name change later (ditching the original Jamaica Observer Celebrates Fashion’s Night Out moniker for the re-titled Jamaica Observer Takes Style Out), the economic-lifting initiative that this newspaper’s Senior Associate Editor – Lifestyle & Social Content Novia McDonald-Whyte introduced to our shores — backed by Observer Chairman Gordon ‘Butch’ Stewart and his director daughter Jaime Stewart-McConnell and then Managing Director Ed Khoury — after she keenly observed major customer traffic being generated in the Big Apple’s department stores in 2009 during an overseas trip that coincided with the Fashion’s Night Out launch of the one-night-only sales bonanza event masterminded by American Vogue editor Anna Wintour to counter the recession impacting cash registers at retail stores at the time in the Land of the Free.

Taking a leap of faith that the concept would translate as it was rooted in basic dollars and (sales) sense economics, McDonald-Whyte still recalled having last-minute jitters on October 29, 2009 as the kick-off 5:00 pm time for the inaugural five-hour sales event at retail outlets inched closer.

To dispel tentative worry, she dispatched photographer Garfield Robinson to check in at the plazas along Constant Spring Road to gauge if there was public buy-in.

The minutes to hear from Robinson felt like hours. But the call came.

“How is it, Garfield?” a pensive McDonald-Whyte remembered asking.

“It sell off!” he happily reported. “Crowd everywhere.”

Mission: accomplished!

Fears allayed, the first undertaking proved a rip-roaring success with retailers wearing Cheshire cat smiles after a major uptick in sales figures. The iterations that followed broadened participating stores to include parishes around the island, and celebs (Vivica Fox in 2011) and beauty experts (make-up messiah Sam Fine in 2010) and hair gurus (Jane Carter in 2011 and Carol’s Daughter creator Lisa Price in 2012) from overseas being flown in to heighten the level of customer excitement.

Who wouldn’t love a brush of celebrity with massive discounts thrown in?

— Omar Tomlinson

This year’s Jamaica Observer Takes Style Out at retail outlets in Kingston, Portmore, Spanish Town, Santa Cruz, Mandeville, Brown’s Town, Port Antonio, Ocho Rios and Montego Bay on Thursday, October 2. Where will you be shopping?