Metamorphosis has a Price Tag

Critical Shopper
by Cintra Wilson

I’VE never really been able to relate to the idea of vastly expensive clothes, no matter how “classic” they are, as an “investment.” I figured this was the language absurdly rich women used to justify obscene purchases they should be punished for.

Alexander McQueen’s designs strike me with such terrible love, I avoid the place — it crowbars the knees of my financial intelligence. I was in the shop once, several years ago. In a fit of design intoxication, I plonked down $500 for a perfect black pencil skirt, a reckless expenditure that launched me into nosebleeding panic for months afterward.

Since then, I have worn that skirt so relentlessly that even with the most conservative math, it cost me about five bucks a session to wear it. It still looks new; I figure that if it doesn’t rot off my body, it will, in a couple of years, officially work its way to being free. Recalling the initial layout, however, still freezes my marrow. These things are hard enough to justify in an economy that doesn’t look like an avalanche of scratched lotto tickets; now such purchases are indefensible.

I knew my resolve was in jeopardy the minute I stepped inside the shop and a stiletto wingtip spectator bootie ($1,120) stuck all three of its brogued leather tongues out at me. I was vulnerable: I had a performance at a literary festival in San Francisco in a few days, for which I wanted very much to look what the girls at Missbehave magazine call “bangingsome.”

The McQueen fall 2008 runway collection was being shown on the plasma TV. The stage was moody and moonlit; models walked around an enormous artichoke-shape tree, candy-wrapped for fumigation in pleated cellophane that spread around the stage like the train of a silvery wedding gown. Breathtaking.

“What was the inspiration?” I asked a young man with a mohawk named Xuan (pronounced “Sean”). There was so much white tulle and gold brocade, my guess was “Swan Lake” as directed by Crazy Ludwig II of Bavaria.

The collection, I was told, was inspired by a 600-year-old tree in back of Mr. McQueen’s country house. “It’s a story about a girl emerging from the tree, coming out of darkness,” Xuan explained.

A tale of metamorphosis: Girl sheds her duckling down and becomes a crowned head of the Orient.

There was a particularly fetching group of czarist items: a Persian lamb-collared greatcoat ($4,190); silk blouses with jeweled buttons and bunchy princess necks ($1,450); and finally, an enormous crimson satin teardrop of an evening coat with a high ruffled collar (shorter sapphire blue version: $6,880) that perfectly matched a lacquered oval handbag resembling a Fabergé egg. I nicknamed the more Gothic of these offerings: “Anastasia Romanov is back ... and boy is she PO’d.” The perfect style motto to outfit the End Times, or at least a good class war.

I tried on a pair of wonderfully cut, black stretch gabardine pants ($795).

“These are a sound investment,” said the devil in Miss Wilson. “These are inarguably classic. You will wear them for at least 150 years.”

“Shut up,” I told myself, prying them off. I attempted to restrain my impulses by inspecting other aisles.

When Mr. McQueen goes wrong, he goes wrong big. Some of the rubberized waterproof-looking black damask pieces were so lousy with ornate buckles and silver skulls as to require Cher to do a cameo on “Deadwood” (embroidered hourglass leather jacket with asymmetrical motorcycle zipper: $7,795).

And that’s when I saw it: A double-V-neck, Sofia-Loren-Goes-to-Wellesley miniature houndstooth wiggle-dress ($1,230).

Confession: Never in my life had I crossed the $1,000 barrier for a dress I didn’t get married in. I consider it fiscal suicide. Some outrageously tempting garments have clung to me like weepy James Deans, but I have turned and left them coldly on their racks. The Narciso Rodriguez That Got Away stands out as one of the more bitter regrets of my sartorial life, but such is the price of survival.

But this wasn’t a dress: It was the fulfillment of my deepest desires, in wool. For a literary performance, it was the perfect fusion of tweedy respectability and autobahn curves. Elves had tailored it on me while I slept.

“Dammit!” I snarled miserably at my ideal reflection.

My credit cards were banging steel cups against the bars of my wallet. Black smoke began pouring out of my handbag.

After much weeping and rending of sensibility, I bought the dress. There is no investment more worthwhile, I reasoned, than an investment in your own transformation into a better future-self.

Naturally, this flight of rationalization would not go unpunished.

I FOUND myself in a car service on the way to the airport, frantically calling the Alexander McQueen store, the night before my performance.

“Xuan,” I said, “you left the security tag on the dress.”

I had seen it while packing. My brain had exploded, envisioning myself walking onstage and San Francisco saying: “Great dress. Too bad she stole it.”

Xuan sounded miserable. “You can take it to the Gucci store,” he whimpered. “They can remove the tag.”

Was there any other option? Powerful magnets and a crowbar?

“If your hotel has a dry cleaner, they can remove the seams and take it off that way.”

I could hardly bring myself to pay to dismantle a dress of such astronomical expense before I had even spilled anything on it.

Suffice to say, Gucci San Francisco (Alexander McQueen is part of the Gucci Group) came to my rescue. A very nice young man named Dominic removed the offending tag and gave me a new garment bag besides. It was a mild inconvenience.

But if the audience at my event that night doesn’t remember a word I said, I bet they’ll never forget that dress. And I am never taking it off.


photo/article: nytimes.com