Pre-pandemic clothes splurges waiting for better days
In the weeks before the pandemic, Anthony Longhi, 28, a self-described shopaholic who’s a sales associate at Celine in Paris, found himself smitten with a pair of black leather Yves Saint Laurent pants. Their four-figure price felt indulgent, and he hesitated to buy them. Then came the news that France was about to go into shutdown.
That did it. Longhi quickly made his way to the YSL boutique on Avenue Montaigne and bought the pants. They waited in his closet for more than two months.
On the day when lockdown restrictions were eased, he hit the streets in the leather pants, a plain white Zara T-shirt, a Celine moto jacket, a necklace with his own baptism pendant and Perfecto shoes.
Longhi’s story is, he acknowledged, one of great privilege. But it also has a positive message: He has refused to let the virus hold dominion over him.
Extravagant purchases innocently made in February and March, before the extent of the pandemic was known, have become markers of a fast-receding era of freedom. Many of these items now languish in closets. Others are put to good use.
Rating Dries Van Noten’s highimpact spring 2020 collaboration with Christian Lacroix “ingenious” and “operatic,” and predicting it would signal a return to couture, Li Edelkoort, 69, a fashion forecaster in New York, chose a red and black floral jacquard coat from that collection to wear during a spring world speaking tour.
The coat had been little worn; “voluntarily stranded,” as she put it, in Cape Town, where she’s been sequestered since mid-February. Nonetheless, it’s become a badge of her identity, worn for a publicity photo — “a great picture that came in handy for the avalanche of interview requests I’ve received over these past few months,” Edelkoort said.
From New York, days before the coronavirus news hit, transgender performance artist and club diva Amanda Lepore, 52, ordered a custom-made ensemble — gown and matching pasties, garter belt, gloves, cuffs and G-string from Garo Sparo, the design house known for its corsetry.
The gown has yet to be finished, but the accessories arrived with time to spare, prompting Lepore to reach for her glue gun and “stone” them, as she put it, with black Swarovski crystals.
In the more workaday realm, jumpsuits were already a look pre-pandemic. With their easy informality, they rival sweats as the semiofficial quarantine uniform. Julie Stahl, 54, the head of Blonde & Co., a creative content agency for the beauty industry in New York, had already amassed a sizable collection. But in early March, an off-white one in the window of Lululemon Lab irresistibly beckoned.
She bought it, even though she’s “not one of those SoulCycling Lululemon types,” she said. Turns out the new jumpsuit is “insanely comfortable and perfect for anti-contamination — I just throw it in the washing machine at the end of the day. Ironically, it looks a little like a hazmat suit.”
New York hat designer Lola Ehrlich, 72, also bought a jumpsuit, when she was preparing for Paris Fashion Week in late February (in gray, from Alex Mill, at the designer’s SoHo boutique). Accompanied by pearls and a frilly white blouse underneath, it proved perfect for her sales meetings. She has yet to put it on since then.
Ronne Brown, 36, the founder and CEO of Girl CEO Inc., an organization in Washington, D.C., that advises Black female entrepreneurs, has also hung something up, on a closet door.
One of her clients is Anifa Mvuemba, a Congolese-born fashion designer, whose Hanifa clothing collection has been attracting attention. Early in March, Brown went to the Hanifa showroom-shop in Kensington, Md., and bought a low-cut, shape-revealing black slip dress with side slits and ostrich feather trim to wear the following week at the empowerment dinners being held at a March retreat in Cancún, Mexico, for the women’s organization EGL (Everything Girls Love).
The shutdown began hours after her return flight. Since then, the new dress has been on display — at least when her 17year-old daughter, Amor, isn’t trying it on.
Then there is Mike Greko, 29, a musician, songwriter and DJ in New York, whose eclectic style incorporates elements of Nu-disco, rock-edge pop and more.
He already owned a Ziggy Stardust-esque bespoke red sequined performance suit from Ammar Belal Custom Menswear, but back in January he ordered a second, “in gray silver with a teal blue hue when the light hits it,” he said. It arrived just before the shutdown began. Now he sometimes tries it on, “pretending it’s the good old days.” Otherwise, he said, it’s hanging from a door hook, waiting patiently for when clubs reopen. But why two sequined suits? “They bring me joy,” said Greko, “and according to Marie Kondo that’s a good thing.”
Kondo would surely approve the use to which Muriel Favaro, 67, a Parsons School of Design accessories instructor, has put a humongous Comme des Garçons tote bag in a peculiar celery color that arrived from Italy just days before the shutdown: She turned it into a knitting basket for all the random skeins of yarn that had been lying around her apartment in Jersey City.