Tales from Working In Fashion
#1. So today a customer walked up to me at my J-O-B and asked if we had Fear of God. Everyone around me looks mystified. So I just started going on about F.O.G. and my colleagues are like huh? And I’m like — what you don’t watch 15 year old Korean kids on YouTube talk about streetwear obsessively? (For the uninitiated it’s a streetwear brand.)
#2. The lady who came in with 30 little pink dresses to return and no receipts came in with like 8 more pink dresses. And no one can figure out what to do but we are like besties already and I’m like “Hey Mrs. Goldberg, Did you keep all those notes I made for you about how to keep your receipts in one place and use your phone number I look up your order.” And she’s like “oh Sara” and it’s like .... ❤️❤️
#3. My downlow fashion nerd colleagues and I all gave each other the eye when we got hired because you know, we know. I am not sure how we know. Its a certain shoe or hat or extra long dreads.... but we can smell it on each other and we also know that no one else gets it why we care, or why it’s worth saving up every dollar and maybe skipping a few meals to get that vintage JPG see through dress shirt thing. It’s like a secret club. So yesterday my fashion nerd colleague taught me some stuff about sneakers and then gave me a tip about a drop — a raffle to win one of 30 pairs of a designer collab on an Air Force 1.... So you know what lunch time finds me doing? Writing postcards to enter the damn raffle. Yes. Postcards.
#4. All I’m saying is that when you are bit with the fashion bug it’s kinda like an illness that is incurable. I spent all of 6th grade bent over a sewing machine poking myself with needles accidentally when everyone else was outside playing. And all these people are like “meh, clothes whatever who cares” and your old roommate is like “no, actually not everyone comes home talking about what people were wearing on the subway...” And you realize it is incurable because it won’t go away and then one Wednesday in November you are like .... old as fuck and filling out postcards for Air Force 1, and getting to know the lady with the pink dresses, and talking streetwear with Korean teenagers and it all seems perfectly normal.