Planting Dandelions (24 page)

A month later, I got a message on my voice mail: When could I come to New York to go shopping?

When you enter Hearst Tower on the corner of West 57th Street, you are met with a waterfall that spans three-quarters the width of the marble lobby. A diagonal bank of escalators conveys an endless cascade of magazine workers, who ascend and descend with big-city assurance and poise.

And the woman with the giant purple suitcase, stuck in the revolving door? That would be me.

After a very nice security guard rescues me, a
Good Housekeeping
staffer takes me upstairs, and in a glass-paneled conference room, high above Manhattan, the editors and I review The List: commonly agreed-upon “classic” wardrobe items that I am to purchase and take home for a reality test. I look it over. They are the must-haves I've been told all my adult life I must have. I have a generous budget and a town car with a driver at my disposal for the next three days. My kids are home in Little Rock with my husband and my mother for the week. Magically, we've already bypassed several significant obstacles to a middle-income mom looking to dress herself from the must-have list: geography, child care, money, and parking.

I am not complaining.

My first stop is Prada on Madison Avenue. Reuben, my driver, pulls up to the sidewalk in front of the store, walks around, and opens my door. I step out and face the wide glass entrance with its brass fixtures and elegant lettering. At least it's not a revolving door.

I enter the store like a scared little girl on the first day of kindergarten. A beautiful young woman named Christina comes over, smiling. I tell her I am looking to purchase a few classic wardrobe pieces. She asks me several questions about my taste and lifestyle, and listens attentively. She points out fabrics and construction details of garments as if I were buying a car or a sofa. I nod yes to this, no to that. Eventually, she leads me to a sitting area where there are dressing rooms. Someone brings a bottle of Perrier and a crystal tumbler on a linen-lined tray, and sets it down on the white leather ottoman. Would I like a cappuccino?

Toto, we're not in Kmart anymore.

The first item I try on is a pair of black trousers in a lightweight fabric I am told is wool crepe. I can tell right away there is something different about them. They feel amazing. When I look in the mirror, I gasp. I turn around and around. My rear end has instantly lost five pounds and ten years. My belly looks flatter. I think I am having a religious experience. Christina finds me a pair of pumps to try with them. A soft-spoken woman with an Italian accent comes and pins the trousers to the right length for the heel height. They'll be hemmed and ready for me that day. It all seems to be included in the price.

I'm in Prada for nearly two hours. In addition to the trousers, I buy a black pencil skirt. Christina leaves me to finish my cappuccino and brings me a discreet sales slip on a lacquered tray, like a restaurant check. I wish the supermarket operated like this.

“I think you're a Prada girl,” says Christina, as we hug good-bye. I think she's right.

Over the next forty-eight hours, I shop up and down Madison and Fifth Avenues. I decide that Reuben the Driver is my New York husband. He drives me to stores, opens my door, waits for me outside for hours without complaint, and never once nags me about how much I'm spending.

My fears of being treated shabbily by shop staff are mostly unfounded. One exception is an Italian woolens boutique, where the cold shoulder I receive colors my perception of the wares. The cashmere sweaters seem ridiculously overpriced and too fragile for the constant tug of little hands. There's no way around it, though. Cashmere is a perennial on every staples list. I reluctantly go with a cream scoop-neck pullover with ribbed sleeves that feel somewhat substantial. It's undeniably beautiful, but I have a hard time signing the receipt for $730. I can tell it is a better sweater than the one my mother gave me, but there's no way it's seven times better.

At Manolo Blahnik, I have to ring a bell to be let in. Inside, people are coming unglued. The scene reminds me of the giant candy store on the Upper East Side I visited a few days before. There's a woman talking to herself in a corner, surrounded by discarded shoes she's tried on. There's a thirteen-year-old sulking on a chair while multiple generations of her family negotiate with her over heel height. Most shocking, shoppers are shoving their bare feet into the shoes. Every Payless or JCPenney customer is expected to sheathe her foot in a disposable sockette before trying something on, but apparently not in Manolo Blahnik.

It's true what they say: The rich are not like you and me.

I tell a saleswoman I am looking for a pair of classic black pumps. I'm thinking a black pump is a black pump, but apparently not. She converts my American shoe size (in all the stores where I shop, sizing is European), and selects three or four pairs in varying heel heights, cuts, and textures. A shiny black patent leather pair twinkles at me. I try them on and stand up. I am a hundred feet tall, a supermodel–rock star. “I'll take them.”

Outside, I check the list. I've shopped Prada, Chanel, Loro Piana, Yves Saint Laurent, Gucci, Christian Louboutin, Manolo Blahnik, and Burberry. I have a pencil skirt, trousers, a trench coat, pumps, sunglasses—all in black—the cashmere sweater, skinny jeans from Saks, and a red silk scarf from a lovely lady at Hermès who could teach my Cub Scout den a thing or two about tying knots.

I have to decide about a bag.

The budget I've been given for this shopping spree allows $2,000 for an “It” bag. I'm conflicted on two counts here. Two thousand dollars is nearly twice my mortgage payment. It's five times my monthly utility bills. It's a whole lot of things my husband and I have had to put off or forgo when the money just wasn't there.

Then there's the “It” word. “It” means a status symbol. “It” means standing out. “It” means a bunch of things that aren't really me.

I liked the quiet black bag I saw at Prada and an equally discreet tan bag at Yves Saint Laurent. If I can get beyond the price, those are more my style. But this story isn't just about me. I feel like I'm here on behalf of every mom like me who ever wondered from her bathtub what all the hype over a brand of shoes or bag was all about. In this case, I have to go for the hype.

I tell Reuben, “Louis Vuitton, please.”

At the store, the famous LV monogram seems to be on every item in stock. I ask the sales associate to show me the tote styles. If I have to spend $2,000 on a bag, it had better hold my laptop. There's one with a lot of brass hardware on it that seems a little flashy for my taste. But I like its generous size, and the shoulder strap is a good length for me.

The new bag costs more than $1,500 with tax added. I hand over my debit card, holding my breath. Even though I warned my bank in Little Rock to expect some unusual charges this week, I keep expecting the card to catch fire.

The purse I am wearing was a free replacement for a $30 purse that fell apart in two weeks, given begrudgingly after I persuaded the store manager that its life expectancy should have been at least a couple of months. I bet I've owned at least fifty bags of similar quality over the last twenty years. The idea of investing in a few expensive pieces that will last doesn't seem so unreasonable.

Mission accomplished.

The total damage: nearly six thousand dollars.

Waiting for my driver to take me back to my hotel, I see a poorly dressed man struggling across the intersection in a wobbly old wheelchair. In the shop behind me, there are $30,000 handbags, and a three-year waiting list to buy one. There's the perspective I was looking for.

It's time to go home and see how these clothes really fit.

“That's the ugliest purse I've ever seen,” my husband blurts out, when I show him the bag.

I'm slightly wounded. I'm still not entirely comfortable with its brass plaque etched with the brand name (in case the monogrammed initials are too subtle). But it's undeniably a classic, and the large tote size works. I transfer the contents of my old purse—my wallet, a jumbo tube of baby sunscreen, a Ziploc bag of Goldfish crackers, my coupon file—and toss in my beat-up laptop. It all fits.

My husband wants to know what it cost.

“Fifteen hundred dollars,” I tell him.

“That's insane.”

“You better learn to like it, you'll be seeing it for a long while.”

He spots the shoe box. “Show me the shoes.”

I kick off my mom clogs and slip barefoot into the black patent Manolos. The shoes have a three-and-a-half-inch heel.

“Six hundred dollars,” I say.

My husband is staring at my feet, mouth agape.

“I'm totally okay with that,” he says.

I'm timid, at first, about wearing my new things in public. I start with the Gucci sunglasses, on a play date at the park. They cost $300 and have plastic frames with plastic lenses, just like every other pair of sunglasses I've ever owned. At the park, they are a nonevent. If anyone notices them at all, they probably assume they are knockoffs. I don't know which is worse: to be considered extravagant or a sucker.

The next day, I wear the Prada skirt with a long-sleeve T-shirt from Target and a pair of low-heeled sandals. Around noon, I take my preschooler to the library and grocery store. I take the “It” bag with me.

My preschooler remarks, “You have a new purse.”

“Yes,” I say.

“It's so
shiny,
” he says.

Exactly.

“Shiny, shiny, pretty, pretty,” he sings the entire way into the store.

The cashier thinks so, too. “I love your bag,” she calls out to me as I wheel my cart away.

“Thanks.” I smile back at her with genuine pleasure.

The first friend to call me out on a label is Alisha. It's Moms' Night Out and five of us are carpooling to a nightclub to hear a Latin band. When Alisha climbs in the back row with me, she notices the bag.

“
Nice
Louis Vuitton!” she exclaims. Everyone turns around. “Is it real?”

Blushing, I tell her it is, and there ensues a hilarious debate in the parking lot as to whether it is more hassle to take “Louie” inside the club with us and worry about someone taking it, or to hide it in the van outside and worry about someone breaking in.

“I don't believe this!” Alisha says with mock irritation. “It's like you dragged along one of your kids!”

We decide to bring “Louie” inside and take turns keeping an eye on it.

“If you see anyone besides me leave with this bag,” I tell the doorman, “tackle them.”

I'm joking, but the bag causes real worry. I'm hopelessly absentminded. One day I bring in groceries and forget the purse. My husband takes our van to a meeting, where he gets a frantic text message from me: “THERE IS A $1,500 BAG IN THE VAN. GO GET IT NOW.”

The burden of privilege.

Over time, the bag begins to feel more natural to me. I love its size and its durability. I don't feel afraid to handle it, the way I do the cashmere sweater or the Hermès scarf.

Gradually, the clothes are integrated into my life. I get a lot of mileage from the Prada pencil skirt, dressed up and down. I discover that the scarf looks great as a belt for my jeans, though I have to take it off when it starts to rain. I wear the trousers only twice before they need to go to the dry cleaner, an errand that seems to stay at the bottom of the to-do list. Maintenance is definitely going to be an issue.

The Manolos go as easily to third-grade chapel as to a dinner party, where I indulge in my most flagrant act of label flashing. I'm standing in a circle of women, when one of them looks down and gushes, “Great shoes!” I'm about to say, “Thank you,” when I realize she is talking about the shoes next to mine. “Thanks,” says the person for whom the compliment was intended. “I got them at that vintage store. I love yours!”