NTKOG #1: The kind of girl who spends a coronary-inducing amount of cash on clothes.
I am: one of those shoppers who cares more about how a piece fits into my budget than how it fits on my body. Blame my Scottish-Jewish heritage, but I’ve got a closet bursting with clothes that I kinda-sorta like, just because they were too good a deal to pass up!
I am not: well, Paris Hilton, or any of the kids from “Gossip Girl,” or, for example, my best friend Justice. Somehow, shopping on a law student’s cramped budget, Justice always looks sleek and polished and just plain expensive. If she were a confection, she’d be sold by the ounce, not by the pound, is what I’m saying. How does she do it? Every single piece in her wardrobe is a carefully picked sartorial masterpiece, perfectly suited to her figure and style. Because why buy 30 “eh” dresses when you could invest in eight traffic-stoppers?
The scene: Nordstrom, at the Fashion Show mall on the Las Vegas strip. You guys, you can’t even imagine. I stroll in, note the sale rack, and SASHAY PAST IT! Yes! The capitalist lust of entering a shop with no budget was such that I actually sashayed against my will! Oh and verily, my sisters, it felt good.
I was on the market for a new suit – a stunning new suit – to excite the professional fervor of every HR director in Boston. After ten minutes of loading my arms with linen suits and silk blouses without even a glance at the price tags, the sales lady approached me.
“Why don’t you take those into the dressing room and start trying them on? I’ll bring you some more.”
Oh bliss. I tried on party dresses, suits, autumn coats, slacks – at one point I think she brought me a window treatment to drape about my person. And not a glance at the price tags! It truly says something the economic downturn in Vegas (a ghost town of the recession) that a 23-year-old wearing flipflops and an Old Navy sundress could rack up such obsequiousness. About an hour and a half into the sartorial orgy, my sales clerk peeked in to remove an armful of shed skirts and asked if she could get me a cookie.
A few minutes later, I glanced at the price tag of the truly tragic suit jacket I was trying on. $528.00. I called the saleswoman back and asked for that cookie.
The Verdict: Look, capitalist fantasy or not, I’m not trading in my credit score for one outfit. I ended up buying a suit that I fell head-over-heels in love with, as well as a silk cocktail dress that I absolutely don’t need and can’t live without. They were the only wtf-buy-this-now items I tried on all afternoon; weirdly, it turned out completely by coincidence that they were all on sale.
As she rang me up, the saleswoman and I were chatting so much that completely missed the transaction part of our interaction. After she handed me back my debit card, I noticed: “Oh, you didn’t tell me the total price.”
“My mistake! The total is $513.86.”
…for three items of clothing. Fuck. So. I might be sleeping on the floor for a few weeks in Boston, until I get a job and can afford, y’know, furniture.
So am I that kind of girl?
Well, I got a $1100 suit for less than $400, feel like a total badass in it, and look like the kind of girl Warren Buffett would be a damn fool not to hire right off the street. So, near-future destitution pending: net win for splurging on quality and fabric-lust to build a wardrobe made of win.
And while I can’t drop the equivalent of round-trip tickets to Barcelona every time I need a new shirt, I definitely want to be the kind of girl who doesn’t look at the price tag until after I’ve decided whether I can or cannot live without something.
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Good for you for doing this! I was the Kind of Girl Who would buy $7.00 jeans from the $7.00 store because that’s all I could afford in college. I would’ve been thrilled to get “eh”! Fast forward nearly 20 years and I am slowly but surely becoming the Kind of Girl Who buys quality over quantity. A real job helps, but so does the knowledge that yes, dammit, we ARE worth it!