Fun & Famous
Kanye in the closet
by Ilonka Leenheer
No. Wire. Hangers. Ever!!! I don't know if you've ever seen the cult film Mommie Dearest, about the monster that actress Joan Crawford was according to her daughter Christina, but you should watch it just for this famous scene, when Mommie Joan flips out over the metal hangers in her wardrobe. I always reenact this scene when I come home from the dry cleaner.
A slightly modified version is my mantra before I enter a store: No. Sweatshirts. Ever!!! Not that I hate sweatshirts; I actually love them way too much. I keep buying them, despite my mantra. How many sweatshirts does a person need? A lot, you can only conclude when you look in my closet. Every time I promise to save up for a nice dress or a cool jacket and then I give in again for a sweatshirt. Just recently, in the Marc Jacobs store, I fell for one again. But it had a cat on it! It was still very grunge! And it was so soft! ‘How do I say no to this,’ I texted with a picture from the fitting room to enabler and fellow sweatshirt addict S. ‘You can't say no to this,’ she texted back. Ka-ching, the cash register rang again while I made the holy promise: this is really my last one.
Sweatshirts are just so nice. It's the closest thing to pajamas without being pajamas. It makes serious outfits like a pencil skirt a lot less serious. You can just snuggle up in them. I could go on for hours praising sweatshirts but I won't. I'll suffice with the most extreme example (so far) of my love: that I stood in line for four hours for it last Friday. Yes, I was one of the ‘crazies’ (according to some people in the media, I found myself and all those others quite normal) who stood in line for Kanye West's pop-up store in Amsterdam.
Not that I was planning to stand in line for hours. I just went to keep my friend G. company until the store opened. That it would take four hours before we could actually enter the store, you can't make that up. And once you've stood in line for two hours, you don't leave, because then those two hours were completely for nothing.
I normally never stand in line for anything, I roll my eyes if I see more than four people standing at the Albert Heijn. But it was so incredibly fun. Everyone was super relaxed and cheerful. No one minded when friends joined along the way. Some ordered pizza and handed out slices. A young entrepreneur of about eleven went along the line selling ice cream.
I was caught red-handed by enabler and fellow sweatshirt addict S. who laughed heartily at me – maybe I shouldn't instagramming start from an embarrassing spot? But she immediately joined in when she saw what we could buy among other things: a great oversized army green hoodie. ‘We don't have one in green yet,’ we said to each other. We had both just written a piece about Kanye (I for FD Persoonlijk, she for Harper’s Bazaar), which was also a strong argument. And we both watch Keeping Up With The Kardashians purely out of socio-anthropological interest every week, and had often lustfully seen that Kanye merch go by.
Anyway, to make a long story a bit shorter: I've been walking around in my army green oversized sweatshirt for three days now and I'm as happy as a child. But this is really my last one. Hand on my heart.
