Saturday, November 26, 2011
Versace x H&M
So it's Saturday the 19th, and we've just sat outside in the cold for nine hours overnight, waiting for H&M to open its doors to Versace's launch. After being heckled with clever quips pertaining to starving children (contrasted against our greediness) and forgetting the feeling of owning complete sets of toes, there we finally are, by the front doors, hands shaking as we strap on our admission bracelets. While in the waiting area, I'm getting shoved in various directions despite there not being anywhere for the traffic to really go...but that's life. As our bodies are subjected to this involuntary mosh-pit, eyes bloodshot from the lack of sleep and previously-mentioned overnight torture of completely right-angle bend of camping chairs in 'youth' size (which, by the way, is more like fetus than youth if our asses have any say in this), we see an elderly woman with a little Louis Vuitton bag casually approach the security guards. "Excuse me sir, but my daughter called me this morning and asked me to buy her some Versace. Let me in," she says. The security guard leans in, probably because he can't imagine actually having heard the request correctly. "Sorry? Come again?" he asks. "I need to buy some pieces. Let me in," she says. "Madam, these people have been waiting since yesterday afternoon. They have bracelets to get in. We've given all of our bracelets away." The woman shakes him and his explanation off with her little hand, and walks over to a second security guard, repeating her request. We laugh and brace ourselves: they're about to move the little gate to let us in. Two girls at the front- the lead shovers- begin fidgeting. One of them starts repeating the words "Imma get it", and the other begins to nervously perform a series of wrist stretching exercises. Whatever. "Madam, you don't have a bracelet and I can't just let you in without it." The old woman is rejected again. Tension is rising in the holding pen: someone pushes someone and swearing erupts. A young thirty-something Asian man clings to his mother's arm. "Easy does it," a security guard says, before lifting the gate. Easy does not do it, however, and the wrist-stretcher bursts out of the cage, in that same moment tripping over the not-yet-fully removed gate, falling flat on her face. Imma-Get-It, having closely followed her and not having accounted for this sudden change in plans, falls flat on top of her, smashing the wrist-stretcher's mouth against the railing of the gate. The rest of the crowd rushes over and past their bodies as the wrist-stretcher lifts her face to reveal a bloody mouth with newly acquired gap. Wrist-Stretcher plunges into fits of screaming and moaning interspersed with silent moments of patting her freshly exposed gums, as security guards rush past the DJ, drunk off the freshness of his beats and completely oblivious to the whole thing. Imma-Get-It is now screaming too, hand outstretched in the direction of the clothing racks, but, amazingly enough, too crippled by guilt to leave co-psychopath unattended. Meanwhile, the elderly lady, having climbed into the waiting area, is now pulling on the bracelet hanging limply from the victim's hand. Victim, with one hand in mouth and with other hand haphazardly patting the floor in search of missing tooth, is still screaming, now with a bit of a questioning tone at the end of the moans, directed at the elderly lady's persistence in pulling off her bracelet. Elderly lady is yelling "You don't need it! Just give it here!" fighting the now semi-conscious Victim. The scene unfolds amazingly quickly, and before bandages are applied and Elderly Lady is escorted out with help of security guards, we've acquired a couple of pieces, ourselves...
