Working Hard at Westwood

After my sample sale blunder last weekend, I thought I was being smart by turning up an hour early before the advertised 1:30 start at the Vivienne Westwood sample sale at her studios in Battersea.  Wrong!  Turns out, there were already dozens of eager beavers there waiting and all the while, lots of people had special invites which allowed them to jump the queue.  So the security guys ended up operating a ‘one in one out’ policy.  By the time I got in at 14:45, I was sunburnt (a scorching 30 degrees celcius today!), hungry and dehydrated.  Inside, it wasn’t any better, as it was crammed with people jostling, grabbing and trying on things in a frantic bid to get SOMETHING out of this mess.  I headed for the shoes section but as I suspected, no luck there as the only sizes left were things so ridiculously small, only pixie children could fit into them (size EUR32 anyone?).  I wasn’t faring well with the clothes either as I had suddenly lost all will to go rooting for hidden gems because I felt like I was about to pass out in the Westwood-maniacal heat.  I half-heartedly tried on a skirt only to discover that my body was so sticky, I couldn’t even get it to fit properly.  (Ooops….that was too much information wasn’t it?)  I ended up doing something that I have often fallen trap to – it’s THE cardinal shopping sin – buying something for the sake of getting something out of the shopping trip.  There was no bloody way I was leaving that sale without getting at least one memento.  The one good thing about the sale were the prices.  Heavy discounts galore as the pricing was standardised across all stock (skirts £40, dresses £75, shoes £50 etc.).  There was a rack of couture dresses going for £75 – significantly cheaper than its original frightful price tag.  So, I bought this black dress.  These days, I seem to be buying more and more black as it’s getting hotter and hotter which makes no sense to anyone apart from weird old me. 

When I got home and tried it on, I was pleasantly surprised that I could do so many things with it.  I’m very much into multi-functioning garments, making the same piece look different everytime.  With a belt, a safety pin and some black leggings, what originally looked like a Millets black tent can be turned into a multitude of different dresses, turning the levels of dramaticism up or down.  I suffered immensely today but at least I reaped some kind of fruits of shopping labour!