It was the day I first stepped into a luxury goods store, Miu Miu to be exact. And it still remains the only time I've ever done so. That was 2 months ago, and I wanted the Miu Miu SS10 collar really really badly.
I don't really get it, can someone please explain to me how one obtains luxury high end goods? Because that stuff right over there have never been within the reach of my small little puny piggy bank, and I have never ever owned anything that fancy before. Well of course, a collar with naked ladies couldn't be anywhere fancy as compared to, let's say a Celine bag, but to me, it was the protagonist of my dreams for every goddamn single night.
Honestly, how does anyone below the age of 18 (or whatever is deemed appropriate to spend such amount of money) ever obtain such high end goods? Because as soon as I walked into Miu Miu, I felt like a big fool, like my studiedly uniform schoolboy look (Yes, I went there right after school in my school uniform), and deep knowledge of Kant's Theory and algebraic formulas rendered the well-lit, velvet-floored, flawlessly manicured world of Miu Miu irrelevant. I still remembered that as I took in the sight of shelves and shelves of Miu Miu clogs and heels and rows and rows of Coffers, I was shaking in my legs, somehow realizing that perhaps, I had no place in this store. Perhaps, I shouldn't even be allowed here. Thankfully, Miu Miu didn't employ a doorman, which I swear, even he would be reluctant to hold or even open the door for me.
In the store, I saw those ladies whose hair does what it's told and stay where it should, their sumptuous fabrics, and man servant sales-assistants (note that this is in plural) who were sent scurrying round the store just to find the perfect shoe for her. I saw snobbish sales assistants who were seemingly paid to just stand in a corner, and not do anything (well, at least not anything for me, a 16 year old kid who looked like he was lost in a candy store). Looking back, I think they might be mannequins except they were 10 feet wider and 8 inches shorter (Miu Miu Singapore should seriously not place their broken mannequins around the store, it confuses one.) It was then I realised that I felt like a shabby, ill-bred brute, who had more split ends than hair itself, more blackheads than the inches of Miu Miu clogs combined and more acne than anyone present in the room. I had never felt so ugly before, and I hadn't felt as desperately and despairingly that I did not belong somewhere since primary school.
But I tried to approach the seemingly friendliest sales assistant who seemed to be able to see past the fact that I was only some sad and ugly teenager. She looked like she was in her early 20s, with a bank balance that was slightly more than mine. Politely, I asked her if the store had stocked the collars, and I could hear my voice trembling amidst the stares I realised I was receiving. It was intense. I almost had a panic attack. It was as if the stares could crush me anytime then. She then asked another sales-assistant to help check for stock. but seriously who even bothered? They merely pretended to look and returned with the words, "I'm sorry but we are out of stock." During the time they took to check the database in Italy, check the database in Singapore, running around the store, occasionally double checking that the naked ladies were naked, making sure that the cats were fed, going in and out of what presumably is where they keep their stocks, the awkwardness of waiting could have easily crushed me if not for the eye-candies I was eyeballing (naked ladies, and swallow prints, they were great food for the eyes). To break the awkward silence, the sales assistant asked "if I was getting it for a friend?" I said yes, not wanting to reveal too much nor explain, in the case I start to tremble and eat my words again. And looking even more like a fool than I already was.
In the end, nothing came out of the two trips I made (they suggested that I could make a visit to another store but they didn't tell me that the other location stocked only leather goods and accessories). Disappointed, I banged my head against Lindsey Wixson and tried to pull her ponytails out. Also before I left the store, I tried to steal a pair of Miu Miu pink crystal-embellished shoes, and along the way I told the naked ladies that they should put on some clothes and run out of the store when no one was looking. For three days, I couldn't eat nor sleep and finally decided to set up camp outside the store and write air letters to Miss Prada and scare Miu Miu customers with my drooping eye-bags and torn pages of Miu Miu editorials. And along the way, I used the money that was meant for the collar, and spent it on magazines that had Miu Miu on their front covers (Dazed with Mia, and Grey with Constance on it.)
So yeah, seriously, how does one buy such stuff, how does one be 'fancy'? Someone please explain to me how does luxury, high end consumerism even work? Maybe I should just keep drooling on magazines?
Illustration of Miu Miu AW10 via krisatomic.
Sasha in Comme
Craig McDean and Sasha Pivovarova, 2008
