Maxigumee

One night while walking through New York with Russell, Mary, Shannon, and Russell’s friend Roman, we happened to end up in SoHo. Roman, sort of our personal tour guide to the area explained to us that during the day, SoHo is kind of like an alternate reality. “It’s full of models and people trying to be discovered by agents. There really isn’t a hair out of place. And even the guys. All the guys walk like this,” he says as he walks haughtily with his chin up. My reaction, not exactly what should have been expected after Roman’s description, was something along the lines of, “ohmygod, I HAVE to move here!”

My desire to go completely bankrupt by moving to SoHo was only increased when we walked past the corner of Prince and Broadway. My heart almost skipped a beat in excitement when I saw it. Prada! I tried not to seem like I was too excited by gawking, turning my eyes almost painfully back into my skull to get a glimpse at the spring line on display in the front window. On the way back from the cafe we stopped at for some tea, I demanded that we cross the street just to walk past the Prada store again. I nearly salivated when I saw the men’s collection through the back window.

Now, while I was perfectly comfortable looking at this beautiful clothing from a distance, I wasn’t exactly running to the front door. The scenario running through my head of what might happen if I did try to enter the store involved a man in an uptight French accent shouting “You are not worthy of Prada! Get out of here, you mere mortal!” and then me being booted out of the store by a giant bouncer-type guy in sunglasses.

I’m sure that this obsession with and pedestalization (okay, I just made up a word) of a clothing company seems a little bit unhealthy and people were quick to inform me of that. Mary told me that she would never be caught dead in a place like that. Russell told me that while the clothing was alright and pretty and all that stuff, it was way overpriced. But the way I see it, fashion like that is more like art. People pay millions of dollars for good art. And this is art that you can wear. So really, it’s not than unreasonable for a polo shirt to cost $800. Right?

Since I was little bit depressed that I would never be able to enter the Prada store so long as that highly-unlikely bouncer scenario remained in my head, you can imagine my immense joy when Russell, paging through an issue of Time Out New York, found something very interesting. The Prada store was having an exhibit of Miuccia Prada’s skirts from 1989 until 2006! Even though it was our last day in New York and I had to be on a train in three hours, I had to go. Shannon and Mary, still sticking with her would-not-be-caught-dead-there position, decided not to come. Russell and I took the subway by ourselves back to Prince and Broadway and walked to Prada.

Entering, we were greeted by a bubbly, kind college-looking girl. “Hi! Welcome! We’re having an exhibit called ‘Waist Down’ which displays skirts designed by Miuccia Prada since 1989,” she said as she handed us an exhibit packet and gave us two prada buttons with skirts on them. The store was fantastic. I got to see the skating-ramp-like stairs that were featured in Sex And The City, I got to see the see the new spring line up close! I got to see the weird men’s shirt with the hearts all over it that I saw so many times in runway photographs on Style.com!

[I'm starting to realize that for people who can't relate to this sort of fashion excitement, this must be the equivalent of reading a mac-geek's article on the new Mac Book Pro (if they aren't mac-geeks, that is).]

Quite unlike the scenario I had worked out in my head, the staff at the Prada store were very nice as of course they would be. While looking through some of the men’s collection, a woman came up to us and asked us if we needed help finding anything. I wanted to say, “please, do I look like I shop here?” The staff was also really nice and polite when I tried to get away with taking a picture in the purse section. The guy quietly informed me that although he was sorry, photographs were not allowed. He was a lot nicer than that evil woman at American Apparel who barked at me to stop taking pictures there.

So I guess my uptight Prada-bouncer-French-guy fantasy wasn’t so much a reality (but it’s nice to imagine that they are actually like that when there aren’t tons of people looking at skirts there). At least my sister got it. When I told her that I went to Prada she was like, “no way! They let you in? Even though you’re poor?”

[All images in this post are from the Waist Down brochure, an image of which you can see photoshopped into the pictures. To see more about the Prada skirt exhibit, click here and here.]