THIS IS A FREE POST FROM THE REAL SARAH MILLER. If you can afford to, please subscribe.
I came to Geneva to interview a fashionable person and right before I left for the interview I saw a button had fallen off my vintage green velvet blazer. This coat is old and too big for me and without a button it was going to look sloppy. I already felt sloppy as it was — the black boots I have right now are not at all chic and I must replace them but I can’t justify it. My scarf was all wrong. With a button, I’d be just this side of acceptable. Without it, I would not command any respect.
I called the front desk of my hotel to see if they had a sewing kit. “No,” said the front desk person. I tried to wear something else. It was so much worse. Fuck it, I said, So I went to the interview. But on the way there I saw a store, and I thought to myself, hey, I bet you have buttons. Sure enough, they did. Beautiful buttons, and a little tiny sewing kit. It all cost about 4 billion dollars because this efficient nation is expensive, you didn’t think those terse answers were free, did you?
I got to the meeting early and the fashionable person’s fashionable assistant said her boss was late, and I said no problem, I was going to sew a button on my coat while I waited, but then her boss arrived and the interview began and my shabby coat and I went to work.
As it turned out the fashionable person was way more chill than I thought he would be and I don’t think it mattered at all. I even told him before the interview I was freaking out about my button and he laughed, which is something Swiss people do occasionally.
I had something else to do later and I did not want to go to another appointment missing a button. I had some time, so I took a nap. When I woke up, I went through my bag for my sewing kit and the pretty green buttons. Everything was there but the thread. How had I done this? It did not matter. I spent some time looking for a solution — there was no time to get more thread. Could I pull a thread out of a towel? Could I use dental floss? Could I take a button off something else and use that thread? The answer to all these questions was no. And then I saw one of my long hairs on the bed and thought, why not?
I have layered hair, and about 2/3 of my hairs are brown and 1/3 are gray. What I needed was one of my longest brown hairs, the hairs that grow a few inches down from my scalp. But my brown hairs were too thin. The gray ones were the wrong color, but they are coarser. I found a good one and when I successfully threaded the needle with it my adrenaline soared. This was a blast! The piece of hair was maybe ten inches long, and I needed to loop it and tie it, which would give me four inches to sew with. But I couldn’t tie a good knot. The piece was too short, a situation made worse by my glamorous acrylic nails. But the brilliant ideas kept coming. I could tie two pieces of hair together, and then loop this, and have more hair to knot. I’d have to knot at least twice, and even then, it would be a tiny knot, possibly too tiny to work.
I sewed the button on with my hair, elated beyond reason. But when I was almost done, I saw that there was a little loop of hair on the visible side of the button. The thread had gotten stuck and not been pulled through. If it had been actual thread, I might have been able to tug on the thread and fix the loop, but it just was too fragile. And the loop meant that I didn’t have enough thread to tie another knot. I gave the button a little tug. It was on there. But there was a big loop of hair coming out of it. And now I was going to be late. I had been at this for an hour. I decided no button was better than a button and a loop of hair. I tugged the button again and it came off easily, on account of having been sewn on with human hair. So I went to my evening appointment without a button. Embarrassing.
Now it is morning and I am sewing on the button with some thread. But I am going to try the hair thing again. Under less pressured circumstances, I think it can be done, and I can’t wait to experience that moment of success.
Having been married for over twenty years to a Swiss man (and now divorced), this post gave me agita (I’m Italian).
Love. Having spent time in Switzerland, I say you nailed it. Thanks for the laugh.