I think the extent of love I have for fashion is not entirely apparent all the time to my colleagues but today, if they didn’t know before how much I love clothes, or more specifically, MY clothes, they do now! At a fairly spruced-up, quite trendy-ish pub just a few hours ago, I quite stupidly left my bag of new stuff which I bought today and a bag of clothes which I had accumulated in the office, in front of the bar, as I was just crossing the room to some friends. Chat chat chat. Drink drink drink. I then went back to the bar only to find my bags had vanished, kaput.
Frantically, like a madwoman, I began to interrogate the barmen to see whether they had shifted the bags away. Nope. Hadn’t seen or touched them. I began poking through other people’s piles of stuff to see whether my two bags of clothes would surface. Nothing. Only a few raised eyebrows. Then I literally went into full blown panic which in my head went something like this:
‘Oh dear god… my Alexander McQueen cape…. my most favourite stripy blue t-shirt in the world…! Ok…maybe I can find a similar t-shirt again and I suppose I don’t wear the cape too much either. But crap! My Future Classics skirt is in there…. I love that skirt! Oh, my boucle wool short sleeved jacket….. goddamnit, bought that in Hong Kong…can never get that again. Oh woe is me! Why me? Who would want my old rags apart from me???’
Then I started picturing evil women selling my clothes to some consignment store for absolute pittance. My next trail of thought then realised that I lost all the stuff I bought today that curiously is a wee bit colour co-ordinated – a vintage pale beige dress that I want to shorten, the Giles for New Look leopard print heels (yes I succumbed…) and a Mine pink bustier with an exquisite bird print on it.
In those 3 minutes of utter chaos going on inside my head, picturing dodgy designer label pawn shops, I was also bewailing my loss vocally. Hands on the face, literally crying things like ‘Oh no…. not the McQueen cape!’ with onlookers and colleagues looking just a little bewildered and amused.
My bewailment was shortlived though thank god, as it turns out, a group of people grabbed my bags and put them on the other side by the window thinking my bags were part of their baggage. I literally was elated. It was like having dear friends returning to greet me as I saw the bag with my ‘old’ stuff in it. To put it bluntly, I would have preferred my handbag getting stolen than having someone make off with my clothes. Seriously – take the iPod, take the digicam, take my wallet but please NOT the Future Classics skirt!
In hindsight, I did maybe overreact a tad but it made me see how I much love I have for a piece of clothing. Above all the things I’d miss the most, the blue stripy t-shirt would be the one that I would consider mauling someone over simply because I do wear it all the time. If I had lost them, I know for sure someone would have to cart me off to the loony bin as to most people, losing a ‘shirt’ or a ‘skirt’ is nothing, non-sentimental. I feel though on this blog, I’m not the only one who holds their clothing with such high regard as to consider chasing around the block rifling through bins to see whether the supposed cunning thieves might have dumped them there (yes, that thought definitely ran through my mind during those 3 minutes!).
