When I Was Held Hostage in Fashion City - What Fresh Joy Is This?

Behold, darlings; dear old, wrinkly threads of The Abyss! Hello, glistening leather cases and immaculately polished shoes as well as worn out trainers, Rachel's apartment pants, wool socks, underpants and tee-shirts! Your mistress has returned from The Towns, and look at all the treasures she brings along in her many bags! Here come the new girls on the block:

One.

Yes, you can buy a Cerruti 1881 dress for ten euros. She is waiting patiently, downstairs, where one finds the ones that were left over from the hot picks, and no more telling me you’ve had it and it’s all over and it’s too hot to shop anyway. Because it isn’t. At first you think it is horrible, too large for one, and shaped like a potato sack. But there is the smooth seduction of the fabric, the powdery color so very flattering next to Scandinavic pale skin, the luxurious strass knot between the breasts. Adding, of course, the fact that this is Cerruti 1881, and for that price, you’ll never forgive yourself if you don’t at least try it on.

It doesn’t look like a potato sack at all. In fact, it looks kind of awesome, and it makes you look like all adult, sharp, like you are about to take the Texas Hold’em table by storm, while Bond is checking his pair of aces, drinking his shaken Martini, totally stirred by this magnificent presence of a killer dress at the cards game, knowing that it isn’t over, not by a long shot. It never is, while one is dressed in fucking Cerruti.

Do you know who else wore Cerruti? Jack Nicholson, as Daryl Van Horne, in The Witches of Eastwick. Yes, you are that stylish. Just put on the grey-purple long-sleeved dress with plunging neckline, and no one will be able to tell you apart from Mr. Nicholson.

Two.

Michael Klein’s yellow silk dress with small uneven black dots all over. This looks so small, hanging on display, that when you ask to try it on, you are secretly sure it will never fit, and thank god for that, too, since the tag informs you that the entire fabulous dress is 100 percent silk, and in all likelihood, you’ll never be able to buy it anyway. But, like these things sometimes go in life, it is a miracle; an exact fit, and the price, while not competing with the insanity of the ten-euro Cerruti 1881 dress, is so far from not being in your price range, you already feel a jubilant smile coming on, and the hilarity of a style nut for the rest of the girls in the wardrobe back home, welcoming a new baby sister in their midst.

At that very instant, as you pay for the dress, you already picture yourself, feather-light like the narrow dream dress, having late night supper at one of the city’s fabulous restaurants, sipping prosecco, or rosé legér, thinking those fabulous thoughts one thinks only in the city of lights and lightness and liquid pink diamonds, and you couldn’t care less about going to Chanel or Luis Vuitton or Gucci you could not afford to buy anything from anyway, because you are in the perfect summer dress, your journal sits in front of you, you have ink on your left index finger, and that yellow silken beauty is but another reminder for you that this town really is a moveable feast.

The fact that it rains for most of the week after you make the purchase, thus making it impossible to ever actually put on the dreamy dress, seems secondary. You’ll wear her, one day, on an evening like this, when the sensible trainers are replaced by sky-high pumps, and rain by the evening sun, and while everything else will be like it is tonight, down to the ink on the finger, you’ll be at a party, perhaps a wedding, perhaps a birthday, and the silk will never have felt smoother, or the tone of the color more delicate. If the dress was a fruit, she would be a fig. If she was a piece of music, she would be Debussy’s Rêverie. If a book, she would be Marguerite Duras’ The Lover.

Three.

The hot pink button-up top by Marcel Marongiu. Now you know hot pink always makes you think of Reese Witherspoon the way soft pink does Molly Ringwald, but the beauty of the cut is so refined, you decide on the spot to be The Lady in the Hot Pink Suit. This will look stunning with the black mini skirt, you tell yourself in the changing room, and you know it’s true. Even the fact that it will require insurmountable amount of ironing every time before you can even think about leaving the house doesn’t stop you.

You have always secretly harbored a soft spot for Legally Blonde, even if you have only seen it once. But there is a memorable line that Ms. Witherspoon gives, when her jerk of a brainy boyfriend at the beginning leaves her because he is going to pack his things to go to Harvard Law, and no way could he carry on with a dumb blonde like her now that he is in the big leagues. The spurned woman decides to get her man back, even if that means getting into Harvard Law, and this is exactly what she does. Eventually, the jerk is replaced by someone who can truly see her heart and realizes that the blonde is anything but dumb, very much like the Queen, Dolly Parton, foretold in the Sixties, but before that happens, the line is uttered, when the exes bump into each other in the halls of Harvard. The jerk is absolutely stumped over her getting into the school. “What? Like it’s hard(!)”, comes the unforgettable comeback.
                   

Four.

A nude Helmut Lang sleeveless top, made of such delicate fabric it’s dry-clean only, but when you get home and fill the washing machine, you inadvertently toss the Lang in with the rest of the steaming pile of dirty laundry, and it comes out full of tiny holes, a bit as if moths had gotten a hold of the shirt. But it was so unbelievably inexpensive, you don’t feel too bad about it, only enough so that you start figuring ways to still wear the garment, holes and all. Maybe you can go all New Orleans vampire chic, and add some eyeshadow worthy of Anne Rice herself, put on your vintage black-and-white Minna Parikkas, and perfect the look with some black lace gloves. You already got some handy, dating all the way back to your days as the number one Madonna fan of your particular zip code in the Mid-Eighties. Oh, yes, that is how it will work out.

Five.

The white and purple silk scarf. This is of uncertain origin, but so beautiful, it really makes you want to rummage your scarf drawer once back home, and organize it in such a way that the color coding begins and ends with your new item. Because you are nearing that age made famous by the magnificent Nora Ephron, when you start feeling bad about your neck, this – and all the dozens of other silk scarves in your possession, will serve as a reminder, that by no means everything about aging is horrible. Sure, you won’t go to the grocery store in a bikini anymore (of course you never did, even when you might have been able to pull it off, and now, still channeling Ms. Ephron, you feel a distant sadness about all those lost years of nubile smoothness and fresh beauty of your body, wasted in self-doubt, crazy insecurities, and pointless worrying over meaningless things, such as I wonder if my toes look ugly to others, or My god, why do I have to have so many moles, or If I hold my head perfectly still, maybe I won’t develop a hunch/double chins/wrinkles on my forehead) but you’ll always have this stunning scarf from Paris to wrap around your old lady’s neck. It is much more satisfying anyway to sneer at your latest very humble indeed paycheck in a silk scarf than in a bikini.

Six.

The steel grey silk collar shirt with epaulettes, by Surface to Air. You think it makes you look like a sexy librarian, if you do say so yourself, and as a life-long fan of Jessica Fletcher, you must get it immediately. The other Jessica Fletcher collar shirts in your wardrobe will object to this, but you will place her carefully on a hanger, then consider with utmost meticulousness when you can possibly justify wearing such a pretty shirt, and by the time comes, the rest of the shirts will have gotten to know the new-comer, heard her stories as she has theirs about what it is like to be owned by this weird lady who likes to buy shit so she can look at them, and only sometimes, if the planets are at the exact right alignment, one of the lucky ones will be taken out for a spin.

The Jessica Fletchers, while doubtful and pensive about new arrivals, are the most careful and polite of them all, and serve really as go-betweens in the apartment, and many times, when for instance the umbrellas get angry at the fedoras and bowler hats because they think they are giving them attitude, it is the Jessicas that negotiate peace in the neighborhood. The dresses like to keep to themselves, and the fancy jackets that hang inside the wardrobe and not in the hall like the normal, everyday jackets, are really the most stuck up of all. The sweats like pretty much everybody, and the delicate lace gloves are the old ladies of the bunch, who like to gather on top of the bookshelves to play checkers and reminisce about old times, when the mistress was but a young girl playing dress up and walking up and down the dirt road in a pink-and-black lace negligee two sizes too large, wearing the gloves, with horrendous sparkly golden eyeshadow spread all over the eyelids, and a fake beauty mark, penciled above her lip on the right side.

Seven.

The strass necklace. It is very operatic, so how to use it is a very delicate matter. Certainly, under no circumstance, should one add it to anything girly. If it were to accompany a skirt, it must be the severest kind of graphic design, extremely bold and masculine, black or grey. Even white is pushing it, and one will in all likelihood just end up looking like a cheesy Princess Grace fan. But add your grandfather’s old dark grey felt hat and some black leather lace-up oxfords, and you are good to go, even if going means attending the Oscars on behalf of Diane Keaton, a fashion goddess if there ever was one.

You have a secret love for strass jewellery, a soft spot not unlike that for Legally Blonde, ever since you used to try on mother’s one strass necklace sometimes at night, before bed, when she gave you permission. You would carefully put it on in front of a three-way mirror, and admire your delicate child’s neck, and the sparkling necklace around it. You never once saw mother actually wear it herself, it just hung from the pointy corner of the mirror, always, as if it were meant just for you.

Eight.

The midnight blue sparkly cardigan with short sleeves. Putting it on reminds you of Amélie Poulain’s clothes, and it is only appropriate to buy the beautiful garment, especially since midnight blue seems to be elbowing her way into the hot three of the fall colors, the others being forest or emerald green, and burgundy red, and of course the second reason being where you are when eyeing it.

The soulful young woman’s adventures in Montmartre made an impression hard to shake off, and why should you? The famous café doesn’t perhaps have lines meandering all the way outside anymore like the first time you went there, but it is still almost full all the time, and the entire neighborhood rolls and benefits off the fringes of the introvert lady’s powerful tale of love and courage and kindness. A scenery, a backdrop, a character, for more than one book or one film, of course, the borough nevertheless lures countless cinephiles to find their way in and pay their respects to the iconic places of the famous scenes of Jeunet’s gem of a film, and the barkeep tells you a story about how he himself is really an actor as well, only filling in for a sick friend today, and how he starred in a film together with Audrey Tautou once. Not in Amélie, but another one, a made-for-TV movie, but all his scenes were cut, so there is no way to corroborate the story. And why should you? What an obtuse idea.

Nine.

The finale, the ninth gate, or the ninth seductress, like the nine beautiful ladies in the story: the lavender-hued leather and floral-patterned straw handbag. Not quite like a basket, not quite like an average handbag, it has the exact right amount of room for a cardigan in case it gets chilly, a water bottle in case you get thirsty, a book, and a journal. The color scheme reminds you of the aquarelle paintings of the Eighties, especially the ones depicted in Falling in Love as Meryl Streep’s handiwork as an advertising artist; the pastel-colored fruit plates and make-up kits. A woman at the store sees you holding the bag, hesitating, and tells you, smiling, that it already looks like you came in with it, it is your bag, so you have no choice but to take it home now. You agree. You take as a further positive sign, that the woman’s eyeshadow is exactly the same shade of lavender or light purple as the leather part of the bag.

The handbag will have the hardest time adjusting to her new home. The bag stand is already full of beautiful bags, it is an obsession, and they are constantly fighting for attention. They are like a litter of pups, Labrador Retrievers of course, blacks and chocolates and yellows and foxy browns, too, pouring out of the hollow birthday cake, yipping and sniffing and being adorable. Yes, I love you all, you tell them, presenting the new summer bag into the mix. I love you all, and we will have the most wonderful time together! Marilyn tells me it’s diamonds, but girls who can’t afford diamonds buy vintage clothes and accessories instead! And can you really believe all these nine gorgeous girls together cost under a hundred and fifty euros? Because I can’t. But let’s not ask her how much it really was. Asking would be so obtuse.