This is a paid post. Subscribe if you can.
This Week In Women And Luxury
Thursday I was driving my Chevy Bolt to my Pilates mat class in a former brothel above a Cornish pasty shop in Grass Valley CA and talking on the phone to a friend of mine I used to work with at a big glossy magazine’s website that no longer exists.
I loved working with her not just because she was smart and appreciative but because it was an amazing time to exchange the written word for money and our mutual regard was as much about the times as liking each other. How can you not just adore someone who pays you $1000 for an 800-word story about a deodorant spray which says almost nothing about the product?
My friend and I were talking about luxury. Not the word luxury but the category of shopping. In the course of this conversation she told me that she had bought a coat from The Row. I said, how much was your coat?
My friend acted like she didn’t hear me. She kept talking, about how most people had no idea that stuff like this coat from The Row, like coats that were this much, even existed. How much was your coat from The Row, I repeated.
She said if her neighbor knew that she bought a coat from The Row she would probably think she was a terrible person.
Yeah and so like how much was it? I was begging now.
No answer. She told me her neighbor thinks that she is saving the environment by buying secondhand clothes.
I was like why will this bitch not tell me how much her coat cost what the fuck is going on it’s like if she’s gonna tell me about this expensive fucking coat she better fucking tell me how much it is also I can just look this shit up and half of my relationship with this person is talking about stuff for maybe ten years and she’s taking this moment not to tell me how much she paid for her coat?
My phone was on mute.
I unmuted it.
How much was your coat?
$3000, she said instantly.
I told her I had been thinking four thousand.
Hahahaha that’s hilarious, she said when I told her I thought she wouldn’t answer me. She told me about going to speak at a class at a fashion school where all the students were worried about having jobs because weren’t people going to stop buying clothes because Buying Clothes Is Bad, and how she said to them, basically, Be That As It “May”, unless things change drastically, making shit and buying it is — how can I put this, she said to them – still happening.
When I got home I asked T if he knew what The Row was. He said no. I said do you know who Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are. He said yes. I said OK well they started a luxury fashion brand called The Row.
I waited.
He asked me if I was feeling alright. He said it seemed like I was mad he didn’t know what The Row was.
No, I said. No. This isn’t about you. I just am realizing I’ve never really wrapped my head around … Ok. How weird do you think it is that Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen played one person on an ABC sitcom and went on to be fashion icons who have a luxury fashion brand. On a scale of 1-10. How weird.
He said it was a three.
You’re wrong, I said. It’s a six!
I thought about this while I googled “COATS THE ROW.”
“The silk-satin lining makes layering a breeze,” I read. God, what a coat. You look at a coat like this and you think, I don’t need to breathe anymore, this coat, it will breathe for me.
I didn’t know what The Row was. It kind of makes sense that two child stars playing the most clever toddler to walk the face of the planet would grow up to design a series of fancy white and black curtains to disappear behind.
Welcome to my new feature, which is a series of comments on Sarah Miller’s This Week in Women and Luxury series called This Week in Clueless Women in Cheap Yoga Pants Commenting On This Week in Women and Luxury.
I also guessed $4K. And yeah it’s a 6.