Spending money on things: A reflection

I am by no stretch of the imagination what one would call a “classy broad”. A combination of genealogical Protestant work ethic and nurtured middle-class modesty has resulted in an impressive frugality; one that has expressed itself via a wardrobe heavily influenced by Target and internet bargain bins.

But! My closet has had a chance to redeem itself in the eyes of sophisticates, to welcome among its pilling animal-themed tees a Shirt a Grown-Up Lady would wear. In exchange for some advertorial writing, I was recently rewarded with a DKNY gift card. In some countries, instead of paying someone for the extra work they do, people like to barter: a goat for some house painting, a goat for some apple picking, a goat for some numbered pieces of paper that historically have represented gold, etc. At my office, this distaste for so-called “currency” is apparently in effect. I’m just glad it was a gift card and not someone’s first-born son or whatever.

Even with $200 free dollars, it is hard to spend that much money on one thing when you’ve been gasping at price tags like that your whole life. “$315 for a dress?” I kept saying to myself, in my mother’s voice. “What are these? Harem pants made of, silk? Oh. Yes.”

Compared to some of the other stores on South Granville, where I work, DKNY is J.C. Penny. It’s a rich neighbourhood, littered with boutiques that each employ one thin, bored girl to stock three hand-stitched dresses in a white room with exposed ceiling beams. Sometimes there are price tags but mostly it’s a surprise. But to someone from a culture of bargain-bragging, any shop refusing to legitimize the term “BOGO” is suspect, elitist, and ridiculous.

The DKNY shopping experience was new for me, and an enlightening one. For example, I learned that you get Wurthers candies thrown in your bag. I dare you to tell me that’s not worth upwards of $188! I also learned that no matter where you shop, there are going to be things you like, things you don’t like, and things covered in sequins, which as we all know, fall somewhere delightfully in-between.

Wearing my shirt (or “blouse” as elegant women call them) today though, feels pretty sweet. I am in a dry-clean-only kinda mood. Which is to say: posh. Even though I spilled my lunch on it already, miraculously in two separate frontal hemispheres, and even though I’m acutely aware it costs more because of the label, not because the Chinese children sewing it are making any more money, I’m feeling fancy. It’s like they always say: dress for the job you want, especially if the job you want is to wear expensive clothes that you didn’t technically pay for.