Stuart is a bag whore who will happily spend hours digging around in a luggage shop. Me, I look around maybe for fifteen minutes and I can immediately see what I would buy if I had money and if I do have money I am buying it. Stuart needs at least another hour. Even if he sees what he wants, he doesn’t buy it. No. He needs to think about it.
I now know how men who are dragged off to shopping while their wife, girlfriend, daughter leaves them with their pocketbook feel. Time stops.
The illusive object that Stuart has been hunting is the bag Johnny Depp carries in The Ninth Gate.
Personally I think that if Anthony Powell (the costume designer) handed Stuart the exact bag Johnny uses in the film, Stuart would still find fault with it. Over the last year I have seen him buy and then sell at least four bags that I thought were really lovely.
I told him that the bag in his head has become the essence of bag and that he will never find it- sort of like Plato’s theory of forms.
When I told him this, he rolled his eyes. “Shut it Thomas.”
When he goes on one of his shopping benders I have learned to just walk away. There are other things that I can look at. Important things. Like finding the perfect tube of red lipstick. 1950’s red. I know it is out there. Someday it will be mine. . .
March 13th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
What happens when he needs to find shoes to match the bag?