Monday, March 2nd, 2009
I have been known, on occasion, to take my clothing obsession too far.
When I lived in New York, I saw a Gwen Stefani ‘Lamb’ trench coat in a magazine and got a little obsessed with it. The mag said it was sold at Bloomingdale’s, so I went down there immediately, ready to swoon over it. See, when I see something in a magazine or a store and I decide that I like it, I get a very giddy feeling. When I decide that I want that item to be part of my clothing entourage, I cannot shake that feeling and it’s only satisfied when I’m strolling down the street with that item in a shopping bag and a smug look on my face.
I get to Bloomie’s and look for the coat. I can’t find it anywhere. I ask the staff and they said they had never had that coat in stock. I was pissed. Devastated, even. In the thirty minutes it had taken me to get from my house to Bloomie’s, I had set my heart on making this purchase.
I scrambled back home and got on the internet, desperately trying to track down the new love of my life. I was calling stores all over the place. Eventually, I got hold of a little boutique somewhere in the heart of Brooklyn. They had it. ‘Do you have it in a 10?’ I asked, crossing my fingers. They did. ‘OK. I’m coming to get it,’ I told them. ‘But I’m coming from Harlem, so it might take me a while. Don’t you dare sell that jacket!’
It seemed to take forever to get there. I tried it on and it was a perfect fit. No question, it had to be mine. But here’s the kicker and I can’t believe I’m actually about to admit this: I spent my rent money on that coat.
*hangs head in shame*
Furthermore, I had to split it over two cards.
*buries face in hands*
I couldn’t help it. It was just too fly. And I looked too good in it. The next day I was telling my mum about it on the phone and I tried to lie about the cost of my new favourite jacket. Well, not so much lie, as just avoid the question altogether. But mama is no fool. She went online, looked it up and chewed me out about it later.
Another time in New York, another jacket obsession. I came across this delightful Pringle mac in a little boutique in Soho. When I tried it on, everyone was saying I should get it. And not just the staff, people who were just browsing around the store were telling me that! Again, I fell in love with it. But this was not long after the purchase of the Lamb trench coat and I was still figuring out how the hell I was going to pay my rent, so I didn’t really have a spare $500 to drop on this Pringle number.
Reluctantly, I put it back on the hanger and wiped a tear as I bid it farewell. A couple of months later, I moved back to England. The niggling thought of that Pringle mac would not leave me. One day, while out shopping with my mama, we went into a dress exchange (a place where rich women drop off their designer duds and they’re sold for delightful prices that bring me joy). I walked into the shop and my eyes were instantly drawn to the right hand corner of the room. That familiar pattern, those colours, that silhouette. It was the Pringle jacket! I let out a screech as I ran and ripped it off the hanger. It was my size! And it was only £100! Are you frikkin’ kidding me? Who has this kind of luck?
I wrapped myself in it like it was a hug from a long lost boyfriend. I told my mother and the shop owner the story of how I had seen this jacket in a store in New York and lusted after it. Everyone agreed – it was like I was destined to own it.
That is one of my favourite purchases ever. I still have both the Lamb and Pringle jackets and whenever I wear them, people always stop me and ask me where I got them.
Money (or rent money, as the case may be) well spent.
Tags: coats, new york, shopping
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Thursday, February 7th, 2008
There are certain jobs where there’s a good camaraderie with your colleagues. Nightclub coat check girls form a bond, a code of ethics, a sense of loyalty not unlike that of say, the marines. When you go to work each night, you’re preparing for battle.
Oh sure, the beginning of the night is all air-kisses and pleasantries, but the end is a complete clusterfuck of cokeheads, drunks, lost tickets, screaming matches, ultimate fighting championships and police cars.
The club where I worked, in Ladbroke Grove, had previously been quite a hovel, notorious for drugs and violence. Then it was shut down and bought out by people who owned a chic hipster hangout, not far away, in Notting Hill. They gave it a makeover and it attracted a new, more up market crowd (read: hardcore cokeheads).
There were usually two or three of us working the coat check and a small army of security working the front of the club. They were there as much to protect us, as they were anything else. (That’s when they weren’t too preoccupied sexually harassing us.)
The majority of the night would be pretty fun. People would arrive within in a two-hour or so time span. Once all their coats had been hung, the rest of the night was spent horsing around, shooting the shit with security or sneaking into the club for a quick boogie.
Yep, it was all fun and games until the clock struck (the dreaded) 3am.
At 2.55am, my fellow coat check comrades and I would suit up and ready ourselves for war. At 3am, the music died, club doors flung open and a few hundred club goers descended on the coat check en masse.
They’d charge at us waving tickets, complaining they’d lost theirs or sometimes just wanted to engage you with their drunken tale of how they just broke up with their girlfriend.
Our job was to deal with all this as quickly as possible. The coat check was a pretty confined area so we were falling over ourselves and each other, digging through mounds of coats while trying to keep people calm and get the security guards hands off our asses.
People who’d lost their ticket had to wait till the end and that never went down well. They’d insist on holding everyone up while they drunkenly explain to you theirs is the black jacket with three buttons down the front, or was it four? No, wait, three. Maybe, two?
On one particularly busy night, a woman gave us her ticket and we looked for her coat. Try as we might, we couldn’t find it anywhere. She was out of it and extremely annoying. She kept screaming the description of the coat and as I waded through the 700 or so jackets, 699 of them seemed to match the description. I guess her last hit of coke was wearing off because her nagging had reached a whole new level. She had all three of us ready to drop kick her in the face or pay security to do it.
We combed every inch of the coat check while she screamed about how she’d make sure we paid for it if we’d lost it.
Eventually, I found it. It was a hideous little number that couldn’t have cost more than £29.99 from New Look. I held it up.
“This is it? This?! I would have done you a favor losing this piece of crap, you wanker. Take your shitty jacket and piss off.”
The one and only time we did actually lost someone’s jacket was not pleasant. Apparently he was a semi-big drug dealer in the area (he didn’t seem to be following the golden ‘never get high on your own supply’ rule though). He threatened to come back and kill us. A little extreme maybe, but there are certain jackets in my collection that would totally warrant a death threat if they were lost. So, I can’t say I blame him. But I did high tail it out of there like my ass was on fire that night.
Usually one of the bouncers would drive me home. Sometimes we’d stop at the all night bagel place in Shepherd’s Bush for a bite. I’d be at home tucked up in bed by 5am, ready to get up and do it all over again the next night. Ahh, all this talk of cokeheads and bagels is making me all misty eyed and homesick.
Tags: coats, drugs, jobs, london, nightclubs
Posted in fashion | 2 Comments »