Fashion

The clothing stalker

I have to confess (I confess a lot here, it feels like therapy. Or the police, department of fashion and beauty). I am a stalker. Sometimes I spend months stalking a piece of clothing/bag/shoe before I make my move, patiently waiting until I finally have saved enough money or, preferably, until the object of obsession is on sale.

Let me give an example. Since mid-May (I'm not exaggerating), I've been stalking a jacket from IRO. Actually even earlier, if you count that I spotted it in February in New York. In May, I started looking online to see who had it. I put all those links in a special folder for this purpose, and from that moment on, I checked them all every morning to see if the sale had started.

I quickly got lucky: an online shop dropped the price by 20%. Now I don't consider 20% a sale, so I patiently waited for the price to drop further. But that didn't happen. And all those other stores had the entire IRO collection on sale, except of course for My Jacket. At the end of June, I caved for that 20%: they had only one left for weeks, and it just took too much time to check 30 times a day if it was still there. A person has to work too.

Hop, into my cart, hop hit BUY, what a party. Within two days it would finally hang in my closet (new purchases always hang on the outside of the closet first instead of inside, because they need to be enjoyed. I am a very grateful shopper). I received a time from UPC when my package would arrive, the countdown could begin.

Then something happened that had never happened before: instead of the package, I received an email from the store. The jacket was no longer available. Here, have your money back. But I didn't want my money back at all! I wanted MY JACKET.

Then it became an obsession: I HAD to have that jacket, that jacket was mine. I googled like crazy, shopped all over Europe. I emailed IRO directly and immediately got a reply – if emails could make sounds, this one would have laughed mockingly BWAHAHAHA: ‘We will never discount this jacket because it is our bestseller.’

What?! Are there more people with my good taste?

It is now mid-August and I am still not over my obsession. Then I might as well go for the full price. Every day I hesitate: should I today...? I also need a new fridge, and the jacket is half a fridge. But a half fridge is useless, so I might as well get this jacket... Anyway, these kinds of fascinating thoughts are going through my blonde head.

The chance is big that once I have it, I will be completely over it. That recently happened with a pair of sunglasses from J.Crew that I had stalked for half a year. Oh, how beautiful it was. I just had to wait until I ended up in a country with a J.Crew store. I went to London, and it was sold out there. I went to LA, and it was sold out there too, but it would be restocked soon. Miraculously, I ended up back in LA the following month and they had it. Bingo! I bought it, put it on my head, walked out of the store and thought outside: I'm over it.

What should I do with that jacket now... In love, they always say ‘the best way to get over someone is to get under someone new’, so I just need to cultivate a new obsession. I'm going to google for a bit, bye!

Geschreven door Ilonka Leenheer