From PEOPLE Magazine Click to enlarge
Jennifer Tilly is on a mission. Shopping at the Beverly Hills Prada women's boutique last summer, the actress is admiring herself in a $6,420 charcoal-gray silk-and-linen car coat sprinkled with plastic beads. "It's so kitschy—something I'd wear to a party where everyone is playing Twister," she says—and places it, along with a matching $640 purse, in the Must Have pile. Next goes a hot-pink satin tank top and skirt, a pair of sling-back pumps and, oh yes, those $530 pearl-gray, ankle-strap stilettos. "They're the last pair in my size," she says. "Of course I have to have them." Tilly is in the early minutes of what will become an almost four-hour spree. "I'm thinking of converting my guest bedroom into one big closet," she says with a laugh. "Who needs friends when you have clothes?"

Spoken like a charter member of that elite club of consummate consumers who juggle premieres and paparazzi in their public lives and buy, buy, buy in private. Each credit-card-carrying celeb has a unique style. Elizabeth Hurley prefers a hands-off approach: Her stylist scours the shops. Goldie Hawn isn't above slipping into the Beverly Hills branch of Neiman Marcus in person, but only on weekdays, at opening time, says an instore source: "She likes to avoid the crowds." Not Gwyneth Paltrow. While grabbing $5,000 worth of clothes and baubles—including one of her favorites, butterfly bobby pins—at London's The Cross boutique last summer, the actress "had no problem with other people being around or looking at her," says the shop's co-owner Sara Keane. Neither does John F. Kennedy Jr. During one trip to buy shirts at the trendy Fred Segal boutique in Santa Monica, he pulled off his T-shirt in the middle of the sales floor while "a gaggle of women gathered to watch," says sales associate David Gonzalez. "He just did his thing." As does Victoria Adams, a.k.a. Posh Spice: Her closet contains 60 pairs of shoes—30 of them never out of the box. "I can't help it," she explains. "When I see something I like, I buy it in every color, and I buy shoes in every color to match, as well as handbags. If I could, I'd go shopping every single day. I'm definitely a shopaholic."

Correction: compulsive shopper. At least that's the term preferred by experts who treat those who over-treat themselves. Dr. Susan Forward, a Brentwood, Calif., therapist and author of 1994's Money Demons, notes that all compulsions "are about filling empty spaces inside"—and she isn't talking closets. The fact is, shopping provides the same emotional catharsis for the rich and famous that it does for QVC fans. Boss on your back? Snap up a new suit. Gained a few pounds? Nothing a new handbag won't handle. Suspended for chomping on your opponent's ear in a heavyweight fight? Buy a Ferrari—that's what Mike Tyson did on July 9, 1997, the day the Nevada Boxing Commission stripped him of his license for making an hors d'oeuvre out of Evander Holyfield. "Buying a $250,000 car," suggests Forward, "is obviously Tyson's way of telling himself he's still on top of the world."

Oprah Winfrey can relate. She remembers days when, "tired and stressed" from struggling to make ends meet, "I would go to the Revlon counter and buy a new lipstick." Bingo! Better mood. For Lauren Velez of New York Undercover fame—one of eight children from a working-class Rockaway Beach, N.Y., family—learning to cope with a $25,000-a-week paycheck was a dizzying experience. "The first time I bought a pair of Prada shoes," she says, "I cried." Now she just says yes; after all, how much damage can her love of tank tops (she has "like 30,000 of them," teases her husband, personal trainer Marc Gordon) do, anyway?

For every Shannen Doherty—who has a penchant for such expensive trinkets as luxury cars (at one time she owned four, including a Porsche and a Mercedes) and in the early '90s bounced more than $30,000 worth of checks despite her $17,500-a-week Beverly Hills, 90210 paycheck—there is a Gloria Estefan. "She doesn't like to shop," says her husband, Emilio Estefan. "She tells me, 'Don't buy me anything else. I don't need anything else.' "

That hasn't stopped Cameron Diaz, a softy for sweaters, or basketballer Charles Oakley, a forward this season for the Toronto Raptors. The four closets in his White Plains, N.Y., bachelor pad are stuffed with more than 100 size-52 suits—most in his favorite citrus hues. "Peaches, oranges and greens make me feel better," he says. What makes Celine Dion feel good is scouting for designer duds. Whenever she's in New York or Paris, says her brother Michel Dion, "she always keeps one day just for shopping." Particular faves are frocks from Dior, Chanel and Ralph Lauren and shoes by the dozen. "I can say she has at least 500 pairs," vows Michel. "If she goes to a store and buys a pair, she'll buy a second pair exactly the same." Arnold Schwarzenegger's weakness is antique leather suitcases he buys from Rodeo Drive's Holland & Holland for up to $2,500 apiece—the kind, says a store spokesman, "you see in private planes or the trunk of a Rolls-Royce." But Schwarzenegger isn't a selfish splurger. Hildora Gonzalez, a former sales associate at Manhattan's posh kids' store Oilily, sold the star several outfits last year. "He's very friendly," she says. "He told me what he wanted as far as giftwrapping and didn't rush me. He came back to pick it all up later."

Not that the shop wouldn't have delivered. Retailers go to great lengths to enable preferred clients to satisfy their hearts' desires. The hip women's clothing chain store bebe, for example, sends regular customer Cher sketches of most collections for home viewing before they hit the stores. "If she finds a fabric she likes," says marketing director Heather Vandenberghe, "she'll sometimes buy every style it comes in." Demi Moore got preferential treatment of another sort when she popped into Gucci's boutique in Cannes during the 1997 film festival. To ensure her privacy, the doors were locked for 45 minutes while Moore, says the saleswoman who helped her, "bought a little bit of everything." Total sale: a reported $15,000. The staff at the chichi Fred Leighton jewelry boutique in Las Vegas's Bellagio hotel were only too happy to comply with a similar request from Michael Jackson. In search of the perfect birthday gift for Elizabeth Taylor last February, the Gloved One had an aide phone the shop and ask to have it closed to the public while Jackson browsed. When the star arrived soon after, the hotel's security personnel linked arms to keep gawkers at bay. It was worth the effort: In addition to the $10,000 ruby, diamond and pearl elephant-shaped handbag he purchased for Liz, Jackson also sprang for a $200,000,110-carat diamond cuff bracelet for himself.

For such potential returns, savvy proprietors cart racks of clothes and boxes of accessories to the homes of select customers purely on spec. "It's nice," says former Melrose Place star Lisa Rinna, who counts lipsticks and little strappy dresses among life's irresistible forces, "but also dangerous. They send something to the house, you'll try it on and then go, 'If I hadn't seen the stuff, I never would have bought it.' "

Of course, for those willing to turn themselves into walking billboards, not paying may be the bottom line. Last year, Tom Hanks's wife, actress Rita Wilson, was among a select group of celebs invited to L.A.'s Hotel Bel-Air by cobbler Diego Della Valle to pick out—for free—a pair of his $300 pebble-soled J.P. Tod's loafers (she got a pair for herself and one for Tom). As actress and Estée Lauder model Elizabeth Hurley once told Brentwood magazine, "I admit I get free couture clothes with matching bags and shoes. I spend less on clothes now than I ever have in my life." The reason is simple: A picture of a star in a designer's clothes is worth a thousand sales. "Every time [a celeb] is shot by a paparazzo," says Jerry Sharell, onetime publicist for BCBG, whose sexy, cutting-edge clothes are favored by (and given to) such stars as Jerry Maguire's Renée Zellweger, "it's good for us."

There are those, however, who think the deal is too sweet. "I'd much rather pay and not be obligated to be a shill," says Jennifer Tilly. But she and others often do work out discounts. "You can always negotiate," she says. "It doesn't matter if it's Rodeo Drive or a flea market." It's a perk relatively new to rapper Lil' Kim (a.k.a. Kim Jones). "A lot of designers have been giving me clothes," she says gleefully. "Sometimes I send them back, but a lot of times, I end up keeping them." Not that she needs the handouts. No stranger to shopping ("It's my love, but it's not my life"), Kim estimates that she has dropped as much as $20,000 a month on clothes from such designers as Versace, Gucci and Anna Sui. "Women like to look good," says the performer, who stores her wardrobe in a gigantic walk-in closet in her four-bedroom New Jersey home. "And we also don't like to wear the same dress twice."

For some stars, how the fitting room looks is as important as how they look. Some years ago, Independence Day costar Vivica A. Fox waited tables at the Beverly Center's L.A. Pasta and Pizza place, now defunct. Though the actress goes to the Center only to shop these days, she hasn't forgotten her service industry stint: "I hate people who leave the dressing room totally cluttered," she says. "I always pick up my clothes and put them back on their hangers."

There's another solution: Do as Jennifer Tilly does and simply shove everything in sight into the buy bag. "I once asked my psychiatrist if I was a shopaholic," says Tilly. "We came to the conclusion that my shopping isn't a problem, it's a pastime." One day, she says with a grin, "people will look back at my life and say, 'She didn't accomplish much, but she wore great clothes.' "

Karen S. Schneider
Steven Cojocaru, Joanna Blonska, Cindy Dampier, Lanie Goodman, Sue Miller, Marisa Sandora, Don Sider, Paula Yoo and bureau reports