May 29, 2024 |
Some touching, an ’ickle bit of tongue, the odd twang of a panty: when does flirting with shopping turn into add-to-cart – you know: actually “doing it”? If this issue is devoted to all things, thoughts, realities and definitions of “luxury now”, then changing rooms are my strip joints. I’m here for the tease.
Dover Street Market, 29th November, 2023. This happened.
“You see that Comme jacket, the navy pinstriped one?” “Yeah.” “Do you think it’s a bit Rachel Auburn? Only I’d definitely wear it to a meeting… you know, like a high-profile power meeting with Rei K or John Pawson or somebody fabulous like that. I mean, I’d even wear it to get married in.” “Richard, you are married!” “Oh, yeah.”
And so it continues: a chaotic will-he, won’t-he conversation-with-self that’s more of a wank. Jockstrap, stockings, waspie, the lot: I’m so flipping flirty with shopping that somebody’s bound to poke a Prada hot dog through the fitting-room curtain at any moment. What is this – a back room?
From flirting to touching to sniffing the lining to that bit: the trying-on.
My arms slip into your arms and everything sits “just so”. A match ‘Made in Japan’.
If the changing room is the tease, the till point is, surely the end result. The wrapping of the jacket in paper as two ends come together as one; the insertion deep into the bag and that sticky little sticker at the end. The receipt? The post-coital fag.
Blowing circles into the sky, I’m now a better me, a newer new-jacket me. I’m a very big deal. *Please note: not all shopping disabilities can be seen.
And Harrods! It’s only a matter of time before they issue me with a changing-room cease-and-desist.
“Touch this schkin, honey. Touch allll of this schkin!”
“Everything okay in there, sir?”
*Indiscernible fumbling noises/belt buckle jangles*
“All fine, thank you. I’m nearly there… I mean, done. Nearly done.”
You know, there’s a certain amount of blind faith I (we) project on to our luxury shopping. The shopping – that special piece – becomes an over-the-counter dupe for our dreams but mostly our insecurities. Like Giulietta in Powell and Pressburger’s The Tales of Hoffmann, we are seduced by the power of illusory jewels.
“This (insert purchase here) will make me beautiful”, “happy” and “young once more”.
We ask a lot from a piece of cashmere, or the latest designer bag and shoe. Are we naive? In a way, yes. But we know we are naive, there’s a difference.
The receipt is not merely a contract proving purchase, it’s a contract with yourself: one that agrees to a temporary suspension of a certain rational thinking. A cashmere jumper or Rachel Auburn- alike jacket – Comme or not – isn’t going to take away my sagging tits, nor that awful anxiety, which never fails to punch me – BAM! – right there in the stomach when I walk into a room filled with (gulp) people.
Having said allllll that: wearing something you cherish is a joy. That walk into a room just got easier and I swear my tits have gone. Or at least back in the right place. The thinner place – the one, where I’m rich; the one where I look rich; do rich things and I’m young. And rich. Reality is vastly overrated. Just try things on instead.
Weetabix, check! Coffee, check! That new Comme jacket, postdated cheque! If you can’t afford the airfare: fake it.
It’s only after writing this that I’ve come to realise window shopping isn’t what it used to be – it’s better. Livestreaming a show from Paris is the biggest dick tease known to man. Here’s what you could own if… A. You could fold space six months to the season ahead. And B. You had a quadrillion dollars and a diamond ring. Designers have been dealing in FOMO since Karl were a lad.
The French have a brilliantly evocative idiom for window shopping: “faire du lèche-vitrine”. Its literal translation? To lick the shop window. But now we’re licking the screen. “Laicher l’ecran”? My apologies to the French-speaking world if this is wrong. Livestreaming shows is porn for wannabe shoppers. All we’re missing is the camp-slutty dialogue of “shove it in hard, big boy”. That’s my credit card in their till, just to clarify.
WHITE BRIEFS, WORK SHIRT BY DAVID LOCK, 2022
Then come the screengrabs. Ouf. Relentless! There’s a section on my iPhone Notes called ‘Lewks’. I’m not making this up. ‘Lewks’ is filled with surreptitious little screengrabs of things I want to buy, people who’ve pulled together a ‘lewk’ and lots and lots of shoes. At last count there were seven – seven – pictures of Bottega Veneta Orbits. Pervert.
You know, mine may not be the longest out there, but it’s wide. A lot of people like it wide “like a TV remote!” Somebody said, once.
My wardrobe. My beautiful wide (reasonably long) wardrobe. The editor said, “Can we take a picture of it?” “Absolutely not!” I said. “That’s like first base with a complete stranger – it’s not freshers’ week!” How rude.
No, me and my wardrobe: it’s personal. It’s emotional. It’s a place I go where nothing else counts: it’s all in a straight line and extremely ordered. One section comes devoted, entirely, to jumpers from Marks & Spencer.
At this point you’re doing one of those lols. And I am too. But there’s a part of me (probably called June) who loves an M&S crewneck knit.
June (me) is also partial to a camel chino and a body warmer, which says more about my dress sense than I’d normally reveal but you’d be surprised how many “Junes” there are in fashion. And, being a June, that means you can spot another June a mile off – a kind of high- fashion June-dar. Bottega Veneta’s Matthieu Blazy? A June, if I ever saw one. His mum-jeans and a crewneck knit? June o’clock. The Queen of the Junes has to be our very own JW Anderson. Our Johnny loves a June-lewk and is a committed June- apparel fan, both off the runway and when taking a bow on it.
Even his ever-evolving, ever- questioning collections can often be laced with a touch of “the Junes”. Those excellent APC collab jeans he did? June down the golf club, a couple o’sherrys in. Schiaparelli’s hugely talented Daniel Roseberry and his uniform of blue Oxford shirt, faded, boxy-ish jeans and sneakers? A hot-dad subset of June that we’ll call “DILF-YJune”, and it’s right up there in the highest echelons of June-à-Porter fashions. Fit, as well.
Did I tell you, somebody sent me an Instagram video the other day of a woman in talking-point specs banging on about fashion, going “… you don’t need lots of money to buy style… something something…you’re born with it… something something… I bought this [points to some inexplicably foul necklace] for $4 and this bag for $3… blah-blah bollocks.” On and on she went about how some thrupenny tat she’d coughed up 3p for was “chic” and how everything, everywhere, should be “circular”. I had to turn it off.
I mean, darling, we get it. We allll get it. But you don’t need to be Caryn Franklin to see that what you’ve bought there is a load of old arse. Let’s not park our creativity and taste at the door as soon as we walk into a smelly shop.
I went into one the other day – a second-hand shop. Somebody was burning incense. I thought, you may as well apply a roll-on after a marathon, darlin’. I do find the dead quite, quite inconsiderate, sometimes.
But, to be fair, we are saving the planet here, and after about seven minutes, your nose becomes accustomed. And after a really good root through a couple of New Kids on the Block nighties from the inside market (18 Christmas jumpers – 12 of which had the grinch on the front – and a jigsaw of Windsor Castle), I found a Gloverall duffle coat in, wait for it… navy! And not a million miles from, in fact, the next door neighbour of “that” duffle coat from last autumn by (brand-name redacted by editor). *Hint: it starts with P and there are two of them.
Now, if you’ll excuse me: I’m off to watch our Kim livestream his latest Dior show with the curtains closed.
*Indiscernible fumbling noises/ belt buckle jangles*
Artwork by David Lock. “ No sex, just spoons: the changing room confessions of a luxury-perv,” taken from Issue 59 of 10 Men – PRECISION, CRAFT, LUXURY – out now. Order your copy here.
