An adventure in an icy world

When I found out that there was a Balenciaga jacket for sale in Cambridge, I decided to make a trip there while I was in Boston for an appointment with my orthodontist.

Yes, I am talking about THE paisley jacket from the SS06 collection. I own a navy one and I loved it so much that I wanted to collect a grey one as well.

It was the day after the snow storm. JFK was so frozen that my plane couldn’t take off until we waited in the plane for an hour for the ice to melt. By the time my appointment was over, Boston was warm in the sun and the ice was melting. I took the bus and then walked to the apartment where I visited the seller and tried on the jacket.

The seller was a very friendly Asian girl, a fashion connoisseur and an anthropologist living in Cambridge as a visiting scholar. We were both amused by the fact that our lines of work were not related with fashion at all, yet we both constantly changed roles between the fashion world and the real world.

The jacket fit. I wrote her a check, she handed me the jacket and then she started showing me her closet. The Pandora’s box was open! In addition to at least ten pieces of Lanvin crystal and pearl necklace in different colors and styles, many Lanvin bags, numerous pairs of shoes, and countless miumiu suits, there were two collectors’ items (well there were three before I bought the jacket): a floral “parachute” dress from Junya Watanabe’s SS03 collection, and THE patchwork dress from Balenciaga’s SS02 collection!

I couldn’t believe my eyes. I asked her twice to open the cotton dust bag to admire the Belenciaga dress closely. It was a piece of art! The patchwork pieces appeared to be sewn together randomly, yet all the fabric and colors worked in a magical way that the entire dress formed a sleek silhouette and looked extremely figure snagging. Retailed for $8,000 Euro? No wonder! What a lucky girl she was!

We then talked about fashion and the clothes we love until I realized that I had to leave to catch my Limoliner to come back to NYC.

The sidewalks were completely frozen by the time I left. I tried to maneuver my walk to move as fast I could without falling, but I eventually fell on ice. I simply couldn’t walk fast enough. It was 4PM, the wind got stronger, my feet hurt, and my muscles got tense. I didn’t eat lunch and I was thirsty. I finally made my way to Massachusetts Avenue and I tried to catch a cab. Every single of the ten drivers I asked for waved and drove by. Nobody wanted to drive on icy roads.

I was desperate. I had thirty minutes to get to the Hilton Hotel where the bus would take off. I couldn’t find a cab, and my last choice was the bus. There wouldn’t be any problems had the weather been nice, but I sensed that luck was not on my side after I was lucky enough to own that jacket. I got in a bus but it couldn’t leave the stop because there was a handicapped person who had a mental break. The driver got scared and he couldn’t do anything about it. Eventually the bus started moving, but a few minutes later it slid towards the side walk when the driver tried to avoid a crash with a small car. People started screaming, but luckily we didn’t hit anything.

I missed my bus by twelve minutes. What should I do?

You are such a foolTo worry like you do.. OhI know it's toughAnd you can never get enoughOf what you don't really need nowMy, oh myYou've got to get yourself togetherYou've got stuck in a momentAnd you can't get out of itOh love, look at you nowYou've got yourself stuck in a momentAnd you can't get out of it

Okay, calm down and think. I had two choices. Choice A, taking the Chinatown bus and safety could be compromised; choice B, staying overnight with my mother in-law in Brookline.

“Good thing I married a guy from the town of Brookline AND my mother in-law wouldn’t fly out to Florida until the day after”, I thought. I couldn’t get out of it, but I had a home to stay.

The trip back to NYC the next day wasn’t easy. That night when I called to schedule a cab to drive me from Brookline to the Hilton to catch the 6am bus home, all the cab phone lines were busy. Eventually I got one but it didn’t show the next morning. Luckily I got a cab on my way out and I managed to catch my bus. So here I am, sitting at home typing my story. I am exhausted. I wish my fashion conversation with the seller was shorter. But would I do it again if I was in the same situation? I probably still would.