Modern relics
Because things have been pre-owned by the actress Chloë Sevigny, they (evidently) must be worth twice as much
Would you buy a pair of denim chaps?
Would you do so for $145 USD?
Evidently you would if you were “a 24-year-old art director” and the chaps in question had previously been owned by actress and hipster icon Chloë Sevigny, and Ms. Sevigny herself had played the saleswoman and told you to buy them.
I clicked on the NYT article about Sevigny hosting a kind of pop-up sample sale of her own old clothes expecting to seethe with FOMO. What an event, whereas here I am, ordering random mesh shirts off the internet.
Instead all I could think was, why? Why do this? Why wait in a line to pay too much money for clothes that cost more because an actress once wore (or at any rate, owned) them?
I’m not above waiting in a line for a sample sale. I have plenty of used clothes. But this? Do people think they will become Sevigny by wearing her rejected designer t-shirts or whatever?
And then it of course occurred to me that there is an episode.
Richard accuses Hyacinth of getting “carried away” at “country estate sales.” He tells her that she thinks just because an aristocrat had owned something, it’s worth twice the usual amount.
Hyacinth never listens to what anyone else is saying, so she just repeats back what Richard has accused her of, but it is in fact true. She does think that prior ownership by someone titled doubles the value of an item.
True to form (and when are the “Keeping Up Appearances” characters ever otherwise) she does not actually overspend during her quest for something aristocratically pre-owned. Much as her “country cottage” turns out to be an attic apartment too small to stand in, her big splurge at the country estate sale is a deceased elderly posh lady’s home-brewed wine. She gets inadvertently drunk on the stuff and is nearly taken advantage of by a lecherous aristocrat.
I don’t know if this is me being old or what, but the idea of going to a used Chloë Sevigny clothing sale does nothing for me. A country estate sale, however? Count me in.
Does that mean we should call you 'Hyacinth Maltz Bovy' or 'Phoebe Bucket' ('Boo-shay! Phoebe booo-SHAAYYY')?
elm
yust askin'
That episode cracks me up. My husband and I used to watch "Keeping Up Appearances" all the time in our early days of marriage. I love it when post about Hyacinth. I personally love her nemesis, Onslow. Especially in the QE2 episode.