This spring, when Chloë Sevigny announced she was putting on a closet sale in New York, a number of feelings passed through me all at once, a kind of poisoning. First, obviously, jealousy: a vintage jumble sale is my favoured way to shop, but I could not be there in New York to rifle through her racks, to pick up her unwanted denim chaps or Prada backpacks or vintage kilts or Miu Miu clogs, to walk home with a bitchy strut ready to begin the rest of my life as an enigmatic ingenue.
Second, shame. I recognised it in the eyes of the women in the very long queue, documented online. They looked away from the cameras, clearly unwilling to be witnessed here, waiting, their eyes like those of shitting dogs. Yes they wanted the clothes, but no, they very much did not want to be seen wanting. It is hard to remain cool when you’re papped trying to purchase clothes you desire because someone cooler has worn them. The fact of wanting them, of believing them to be imbued with the spirit of Sevigny, deeply undermines the project of remaining unique, louche, necessarily disinterested. But still, they queued, and still I scrolled, wondering idly how I’d look in that Victorian lace blouse with this high-waisted Margiela trouser, and how it might have transformed or improved or settled me down.
