I have become a shopping muse. It’s the retail equivalent of Salma Hayek’s character Serendipity in the Kevin Smith film, Dogma – someone who can inspire a flow of creativity in others, but cannot create anything for themselves. I have thus become someone who can inspire people around me (the boyf, friends) to shop to their hearts content but struggle to buy things for myself.
Just say a shop name.
American Apparel ("Ooh…those ribbed leggings would be perfect for XXX for pairing with her white dress.
COS ("XXX would really love those grey trousers to go with with his Swear shoes")
Beyond Retro ("Ah….the exact same Charles Jourdan shoes to replace the ones XXX trashed at Barfly")
Dispensary ("Why do I bother? The whole shop clearly says XXX all over….")
I don’t blame the XXX people of course seeing as I love them dearly. When I go shopping with them, I genuinely take pleasure in picking out something for them and them nodding excitedly saying ‘Yes yes yes!’.
My shopping experience of more than a decade has finally reached a plateau for me but is opening up many an opportunity for other people. It could well be the fact that my years of accumulation and retail excess have resulted in me looking at things in stores thinking ‘Hmmm….I definitely have something like that floating around…’ or ‘I could make something like that….’.
I have survived for so long in the world without a shopping muse, foraging for myself in the retail land of the unknown and right now, even though I’m content being a shopping muse, perhaps someone needs to send me a shopping muse? So of course the ultimate test will be to do the rounds (as in trekking to all my fave spots) ALONE relying on the muse inside me to help me out.
