LIVING WITH MANNERS

4. How to Browse in Wildly Expensive Clothes Stores

Written by Mandroid3000

The first time you visit a designer clothing store can be humiliating. The assistants are like emaciated piranhas floating around you like you're a rotting bovine carcass. Despite being on minimum wage, they act as if it's entirely reasonable to pay a thousand dollars for a ripped t-shirt with a picture of a cowboy on it. With a withering gaze they can access your very soul and actually make you try to wander out to your nonexistent Combine Harvester and drive to Tex's Land of Pants.

So you can't afford anything in these stores. That's fine. Who the hell can who'd be reading this for advice? For us, going into these stores is not about shopping, it's free cultural tourism. It's your chance to leave your fingerprints on something that will be hugging a model's rib cage or a socialite’s bony ass at some insipid charity ball. It’s tourism that can be enjoyed without status signifiers like Gucci dresses or the lack of a potbelly. But to make the most of this experience, you have to do it right.

NOTE: This does not apply to Western tourists in Asia where even the most wealthy of industrialists will walk round in Texas Tech singlets to avoid sweating.

It's almost impossible to subvert the pecking order in a place like this once it’s been established.  So the key is your entrance. Even if you're a neatly dressed, sensible-looking accountant, if you don't enter in the right way they'll see a slack-jawed bumpkin with a straw hat and three teeth. Worse, they'll assume whoever you walked in with is either a relative you just boned in a McDonald’s toilet or the person who holds the pig down while you go about your business (or both).

Don't stare in the window looking like a teenager outside a porn store before entering. And once you're in don't be all "Golly gee whizz, what a great store", or talk about how amazing it is to actually see things Eva Longoria was wearing in US Weekly. If you blow the entrance, buying something to show you belong there will not work; they'll assume you'll be pulling double shifts at the Piggly Wiggly to pay for this one 'nice' thing for your cupboard.

Stride in, throwing the door open with reckless abandon. If you're with someone keep a loud conversation going. You can avoid eye contact with the staff, but the better option is to make extremely intense eye contact, as if the mere act of being looked at will make you pull out your phone and call the label's CEO. When they divert their eyes, you've established your position at the top of the totem poll.

Now that the staff think you’re a Fashionista, Glamazon, Celebutante, or some other irritating verbal conglomerate (e.g. Glamourhorse), you can act like a real ass. Strut around the store, touch stuff. Make cutting remarks about the clothes, but do not disparage the clothes based on the price. Say things like:

• "These pants are the fashion equivalent of a Police Academy movie."
• "By the look of this stitching it comes from the factory that makes Wal-Mart leisure wear."
• "A tight t-shirt with a witty slogan, why doesn't the designer just shoot himself in the skull?"
• "This won't go with any of my current clothes, as none of them are tastelessly derivative shit rags."
  

The staff will be throwing things at you to try on. Try them on. Why the hell not? You have broken a barrier tourists rarely break; you are part of the scene. No one will ever take a Klingon language camper as an actual Klingon, or mistake Mandroid nervously riding a quad bike for a farmer. But you have been taken as a genuine high fashion shopper. Just remember this means that the staff will talk about how fat your ass was for the next month. That’s how the scene works.

Discuss this article on the forums. (0 posts)