HAVE YOU SEEN THIS SHIRT????

WANTED!!!!

I am a victim of my own organization.
This shirt has been hanging around for a year. It has become part of my critical mass of inventory. It is an Italian made man's shirt by Dolce & Gabbana.
I thought it would sell.
It was a sure thing to sell.
It didn't sell.
For three months, it didn't sell.
In September, I cleaned out old inventory. Some I put on final clearance prices. Some I must've pitched. I don't remember which category this shirt actually fell into. Because I sold it this week. And now I can't find it.
I turned my storage upside down. I moved through that closet like a piece of farm machinery.
I ran to the Goodwill and combed the aisles in the hopes of finding it--or something godawful like it.
I did not find it. (Though I found some other good stuff while I was there...)
So I sat and drank coffee and thought and looked at the mess I had made. And began picking the stuff up that I had flung about.
Carefully.
Piece by piece.
Refolding. Hanging up. Stacking and re-stacking.
And I found it.
And I am happy again.

Comments

The Lost Designer of the 80's

Claude Barthelemy seems to have been one of those if-you-needed-to-ask-you-didn't-need-to-know designers. In the '80's, he was listed as a young, hot couturier alongside go-the-distance blue chips like Karl Lagerfeld and Lanvin with his oversized sweaters, minis, leggings and fur-trimmed stoles. Exclusive stores carried his soft-edged jackets to shoppers in the know. And then what happened? His pleated skirts, intarsia sweaters, and naughty, zippered wool catsuits still fetch high prices in vintage world and any dealer with his elegantly simple, Gallic tag on her racks raises a flutter in second-hand seekers. He designed for Barbie, for heaven's sake! But the designer himself, who seems to have cut a meteoric swath across the runways and then...? So what's the story with this wasp-waisted pleated skirt? I wondered what else this woman could have dropped off on her Goodwill drive-by--a Chanel original? A couture Pucci? Surely someone this linked in wouldn't just ...

Change Your Tone!!

I know I have a "unique voice." But I can count on one hand how many people I know who can stand listening to their own voice. (That is not saying there aren't those guys who seem to love talking just to hear the sound of their own voice; but if you literally played it back to them --they'd cringe and crawl under the sofa.) When I was in the 3rd grade, I was chosen to be in some experimental speech/voice therapy at our school. They tried for many weeks to raise the pitch of my voice by having me go up and down the do-re-mi scales until I hit one that they thought sounded pleasing. I had a deep, true contralto voice somewhere a few notes below "do." With the sort of rasping, old-chain-smoker undertones of a freckled Billie Holiday. The experimenters settled on "fa." For 20 minutes three times a week, I got to leave Ms. Foster's third grade classroom and go to the convent living room where I would sing "do-re-mi-fa" and say ...

I Heart Shop-a-Holics

"No one needs $800 shoes." This is an admonishment from those brainy friends every time I say how I picked up a pair of Guiseppe Zanotti shoes or Manolo Blahnik boots at the Goodwill and cackle about how I will sell them on eBay. This is wisdom, I suppose, in an era that touts egalitarian economics as a virtue and from academics, artists and philosophical ascetics who really do believe it's what's inside that counts. (As long as what's inside is what they deem acceptable...but more on that later.) Apostolic WalkFit Fine. Technically, no one needs even $50.00--or $25.00--shoes--those Israelites certainly got around (though it took the power of the Almighty to keep their sandals from wearing out). I suppose history showed that the guys at Valley Forge came out okay with rags wrapped around their feet. So no one needs $800 shoes, just as no one needs a custom Bentley with a Vinotemp wine cabinet in the trunk or a $7,000 Hermes saddle...

Second Hand, Second Thoughts

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