The two end up having sex, something that weighs upon the protagonist's conscience since she has a rule against sleeping with a friend's ex-boyfriend.

Despite some friction between the two, the protagonist finds that she genuinely likes Charlie, who tells her that he's broken up with Julie. The two eventually end up running into each other at a hotel one night after the protagonist's apartment is robbed. The protagonist goes through several terrible relationships with married men (she was told that they were single or separated) and finds herself drawn to and irritated by the filmmaker Charlie, who has started dating her friend Julie. Things are not made much better by her mother's insistence that she return home to England (her family emigrated there during the narrator's childhood) and strike up a relationship with a local Earl that they haven't seen since a disastrous business transaction with her father years ago. Not only does this harm her social standing, but the protagonist is psychologically devastated by the end of the relationship and becomes anorexic as a result. Despite her best attempts to salvage the relationship, the protagonist is dumped by Zack. Initially she believes that she's found 'The One' in the photographer Zack and the two become engaged, after which point Zack becomes emotionally abusive and unresponsive. The book follows an unnamed young socialite living in New York as she interacts with her best friend Julie and tries to find a successful romantic relationship. The book's title refers to rumors that one of the characters routinely gets her hair dyed a certain shade of blonde at Bergdorf Goodman, a luxury goods department store in Midtown Manhattan. The book was released in hardcover on April 7, 2004, by Miramax Books (USA) and Viking Press (UK) and a paperback edition was released the following year by Penguin.

Bergdorf Blondes is the 2004 chick lit début novel of Plum Sykes, an English-born fashion writer and New York “ it girl”.

Bergdorf blondes