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A Writer Buys A Rick Owens Leather She Can't Afford

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  • kurta
    Senior Member
    • Jun 2014
    • 122

    A Writer Buys A Rick Owens Leather She Can't Afford

    Characterizations of Rick, his wares, and their sociological import ensue.

    http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/09/why-...ot-afford.html

    //

    A year ago, I was buying a $4,000 jacket. The entire transaction took 30 minutes, but seemed like much longer, and the whole time I couldn’t feel my face. It was surreal. I walked into the store, tried on two things, looked at myself in the mirror, and handed over my credit card with the lowest APR and a conciliatory cash-back policy. The Asian girl who helped me had blunt bangs and heavily lined eyes and wore a distressed denim duster. Her name was Shelley. It was all super casual in the store.

    Outside, on the blustery Tribeca street, I couldn’t breathe. My face was really, really hot.

    I had to sit down. I slid into a nearby café. I’d just quit my job to become a freelance writer, so it was extra-batshit that I’d bought two MacBook Airs’ worth of lightweight coat. I also knew, with conviction, that I’d sooner eat a pound of hair than suffer the humiliation of returning it.

    When the juice I ordered cost $12, I laughed. It was the dry hiccup of my brain breaking. Things cost what they cost in a nightmare. If the rapture had cracked a fissure in the sky, I would have been like, Would you look at that? Those Caucasians in bad pants were right.

    I’m not one of those people who shops compulsively, feels feelings, and then shoves all that dread in a drawer and backs away. Trying to be a writer in New York is a big-enough crazy that you get just the one before somebody puts a foot down. Even I know that. To make up for my dubious profession, I don’t loll around ordering garbage off the internet, nor do I sashay into boutiques, cooing and air-kissing salespeople who refer to me as their “client.” I don’t do “baller” things on Instagram. I have never purchased anything Kanye West has ever yelled about.

    Which is why the day’s events were so loaded.

    I have no idea what possessed me to walk into the Rick Owens store. To call this flagship a store is hysterical. It’s a miniature fortress of solitude constrained by New York proportions that shrewdly offsets the stark, jagged cave-witch clothes inside. To the uninitiated, it’s uninviting and faintly hospital-ish. Entering is akin to arriving at the cafeteria of a new high school, where said high school is populated entirely by clones of Rihanna. It’s terrifying. You worry you might wet yourself a little.

    The mystique of the store has mostly to do with the designer. Rick Owens is a tall, sinewy man with a thin nose, Old World teeth, and fantastic hair. He resembles an Egon Schiele subject and lives in a five-story Parisian mansion with his muse and business partner, Michèle Lamy. (Lamy doubles as Owens’s much older, pygmy-size, polyamorous goth wife.) Together they make $800 shirts that look like lice-infested shrouds worn by medieval serfs.

    Their coats appear rough-hewn, essentially untreated hides cut into fascinating shapes of seemingly extraterrestrial origin. The moment you throw one on, however, the weight falls into a mysterious, life-affirming silhouette. The black suede, fur-lined Rick Owens motorcycle jacket I selected made me feel thinner, taller, and infinitely more interesting. I looked as if I were in on a secret. The coat was the distillation of everything I’ve ever found seductive about not only living in New York but the prospect of belonging there, too. (As opposed to the Hollywood red-carpet gown that makes tourists of us all by mandating a need for full-body makeup and a “flesh”-hued Spanx tourniquet to the knees.)

    I dared myself to buy that coat and then dared that coat to rebuke me. I wanted to prove that I could visit the apex of cool-rich-people New York (as opposed to the tacky, evil, overwrought rich-people New York*), buy a souvenir, and not turn into a hobo. I know native New Yorkers complain all the time about how anesthetized the City is now. Still, I’ve always found living in New York deeply scary. Without a trust fund or famous parent (and even then, sometimes you need both), the odds of success are ludicrous. It’s not just the fact that you don’t have any money. It’s that money no longer makes sense. This is the part that took me forever to figure out.

    Of course, the jacket has since been ripped off by countless less-expensive brands. And when women stop me in the street to tell me they have the exact same one, I don’t correct them. It’s like tithing. On some days, it’s the nicest thing I’ll do. They really should thank me.

    *I don’t actually know that there’s a significant difference.
  • apathy!
    Senior Member
    • Jan 2014
    • 393

    #2
    what a waste of time

    Comment

    • Shifts
      Senior Member
      • Jul 2013
      • 325

      #3
      It seems I'm one of the few who enjoys that writing. I thought it was honest, even though not giving much food for thought.

      Comment

      • mrbeuys
        Senior Member
        • May 2008
        • 2313

        #4
        I had to stop when I read Rihanna.
        Hi. I like your necklace. - It's actually a rape whistle, but the whistle part fell off.

        Comment

        • Faust
          kitsch killer
          • Sep 2006
          • 37852

          #5
          I stopped when I read The Cut in the link....

          Just kidding. It was cute, thanks for posting, Kurta. But if you want to read something infinitely better written along the same lines, google GQ and confessions of a Gucci shopaholic. Now, that was phenomenal.
          Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

          StyleZeitgeist Magazine

          Comment

          • apathy!
            Senior Member
            • Jan 2014
            • 393

            #6
            Originally posted by Faust View Post
            I stopped when I read The Cut in the link....

            Just kidding. It was cute, thanks for posting, Kurta. But if you want to read something infinitely better written along the same lines, google GQ and confessions of a Gucci shopaholic. Now, that was phenomenal.
            Jesus christ that is truly horrifying.

            if I heard someone say "Gucci men's clothing best represents who I want to be and have become" in real life I don't know what i'd do.

            Comment

            • Faust
              kitsch killer
              • Sep 2006
              • 37852

              #7
              The juice is not the brand but the thorough exploration of one's own psychology and one's relationship with clothing.
              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

              Comment

              • interest1
                Senior Member
                • Nov 2008
                • 3351

                #8
                Originally posted by mrbeuys View Post

                I had to stop when I read Rihanna.
                You got further along than I did. I stopped at "I’d just quit my job to become a freelance writer…". Cry me a river, sweetheart.

                But seriously, regarding her rather sooner "eating a pound of hair" than return the jacket, I once (and very reluctantly) returned a Marni goat fur jacket and have to admit it wasn't my best day. Four months' rent gone – NYC rent – has a funny little way of bringing one back down to reality.

                (And yet here I am, continuing to buy Rick like there's no tomorrow.)
                .
                sain't
                .

                Comment

                • Rommel
                  Junior Member
                  • May 2014
                  • 9

                  #9
                  Originally posted by Faust View Post
                  But if you want to read something infinitely better written along the same lines, google GQ and confessions of a Gucci shopaholic. Now, that was phenomenal.
                  Thanks for that!

                  Comment

                  • galia
                    Senior Member
                    • Jun 2009
                    • 1719

                    #10
                    Originally posted by interest1 View Post
                    You got further along than I did. I stopped at "I’d just quit my job to become a freelance writer…". Cry me a river, sweetheart.
                    Maybe it's because I'm not from NY, but I don't see what's so ridiculous about that statement. She's not asking for a pity party, just explaining why this purchace was especially unreasonable given the circumstances of the life choice she had just made. I can empathise with that.

                    That being said, I don't think there was anything interesting about this article. I with the whole genre of the personal memoir in journalism would just die already, it alows people of mediocre talent to flood the press and the internet with minor personnal experiences that they spin into some life-affirming thing that says something about the state of the world we live in. in other words, bullshit of the highest order.

                    Comment

                    • Faust
                      kitsch killer
                      • Sep 2006
                      • 37852

                      #11
                      Well, no one has ever accused The Cut of publishing quality journalism. Hence my earlier quip.
                      Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                      StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                      Comment

                      • Peasant
                        Senior Member
                        • Jul 2009
                        • 1507

                        #12
                        Yeah, I think the "quit my job" statement was to accentuate how careless and foolish she was being. But yeah.. don't be a dumb-ass and you will usually be fine.

                        Comment

                        • DudleyGray
                          Senior Member
                          • Jul 2013
                          • 1143

                          #13
                          That seems careless and foolish only for an uninteresting person.
                          bandcamp | facebook | youtube

                          Comment

                          • Null12
                            Senior Member
                            • Oct 2013
                            • 139

                            #14
                            I think I got my jimmies rustled by the fact that she converts her leather into apple products...

                            Comment

                            • Faust
                              kitsch killer
                              • Sep 2006
                              • 37852

                              #15
                              Why? I convert everything into RO tees. Things have become much more affordable since I started doing that!
                              Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months - Oscar Wilde

                              StyleZeitgeist Magazine

                              Comment

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