When people discover that we own and do the buying for a women’s luxury apparel and accessories boutique, their eyes invariably widen as the almost inevitable images form in their minds: catwalks showcasing gazelle-like creatures in fantastical concoctions that defy the laws of gravity (both the creatures and the concoctions, that is); quintessential Parisian boulevards and cafes thronged with multitudes of über-chic hangers-on, who seem to always accompany fashion’s roving epicenter; trans-Atlantic flights during which my business partner and I, impeccably dressed (ha!), lounge in our First Class seats, lazily sipping that mandatory glass of champagne as we select this beautiful piece of couture over that, musing, “Can we have it in chartreuse instead of red, though?”
Such is the stuff of fantasy (though we do appreciate the fiction).
The Travel
Photo Credit: Roey Ahram
Unfailingly, our flights leave at the crack of dawn (or, as we more familiarly think of it, the butt-crack of dawn). Since we work in the boutique every day, six days a week, we try to maximize our time away. Domestically, this often means one-day turnarounds to New York City, flying out at 6:00 a.m. and returning at 10:00 p.m. the same day. In the case of Paris, we commit to four-day guerrilla buying trips, necessitating red-eye flights that land at 9:00 a.m. and see us racing from the airport to our first appointment, of twelve, on the day of our arrival.
And we only travel by anything but cattle car when faced with a Trans-atlantic flight, the need for the Business Class sleep experience outweighing our more puritanical business sensibilities. Then, and only then (it’s true), we do indulge in a glass of champagne before attempting to catch a few hours of sleep.
We would be remiss, too, if we did not include a salute to New York’s La Guardia Airport (which we lovingly refer to as the “free clinic”). In two years of heavy Chicago-New York traveling, we have experienced a non-cancelled, on-time flight only once. Thanks to said airport’s unfailing tendencies toward canceling flights due to “bad weather” in the New York area (the skies showing nary a cloud), we have become aficionadas of the bottoms of Au Bon Pain’s soup pots. Sad to say, we rather pride ourselves on our ability to determine in a heartbeat whether or not we safely can eat the scrapings of this soup tureen over that one.
The “Tourism”
Photo Credit: Jocelyn Allen
“So, what did you do while you were there? Did you see any new plays? Visit any museums? Or how about restaurants- did you go anywhere fabulous?”
Two words: Trail Mix.
We cannot tell you how many times we have covered ten to fifteen showroom appointments a day (each lasting anywhere from forty-five minutes to two hours), grabbing a bite of lunch at one of the showrooms, if we are lucky. All the while, we shoot photos of emaciated eighteen-year-olds in utterly sheer clothes and take frenzied notes about color ways, fabrics, changes in hem length from sample to production and delivery dates. We only hope against hope we will remember any of what we have seen or, at a minimum, will be able to decipher what we have scribbled in our notes.
And our culinary reward at the end of our thirteen-hour day? You guessed it: the manna of the gods, that divine compilation of mixed nuts and dried fruits commonly known as Trail Mix, which we consume in semi-comatose states once we return to our lodgings.
Needless to say, our domestic and international cultural intelligence quotients certainly have not increased one bit since we began.
The Shows
Photo Credit: Chandrahadi Junarto
Okay. We would be lying if we said we did not enjoy attending the fashion shows.
Visual feasts set to phenomenal music, the shows usually last a mere seven minutes. Providing an overview of the designer’s driving vision for the season, each show introduces, in steroid form, the collection’s colors, shapes, textures, and silhouettes. Pageantry and artistry at their best, the shows reinforce our belief that fashion can be fine art.
But the best part about the shows?
Watching the people who come to watch.
Celebrity sightings aside (you get at least one per show), the real pageant happens in the bleachers. We particularly enjoy the socialites and prominent fashion industry figures who clearly have spent weeks orchestrating their ensembles so as to elicit that status-inducing, frenzy of flashes that the paparazzi bestow upon the lucky few. “Can you tell us who you are wearing?” has become the carrot at the end of the stick for so many of the front row’s occupants.
This, of course, can be beat only by our one brush with front row-dom. We unexpectedly found ourselves seated by the designer in the best seats in the house, as an apology for dropping us under the coercion of a certain politically-connected boutique owner who regularly seeks monopolies on high-profile designers. Settling in, we were shocked to be asked for our picture. (Apparently, not all real estate has lost its value.) We agreed, hoping the layer of grime we had acquired throughout a day’s worth of New York taxicab rides would not show up on film (or could be airbrushed away). Joking through our rigor mortis smiles, we sympathized with the photojournalist who, we imagined, would end up hunched over his keyboard that night, attempting in vain to google us. “Hmmm. Maybe I spelled their names wrong…”
Indeed, as the impeccably dressed socialite stage-whispered to her companion as they walked by us, “Who the hell* are they?” (*In a slightly more vulgar fashion)
The Bottom Line
We have opened a luxury business during one of the worst economies in a very long time. We work harder than we ever have, sleep less than is healthy, and are away from our families (seven young children and two exhausted husbands between us) far more than we would like. We see more of one another and less of our extra-boutique friends than we ever could have believed.
But it all boils down to this:
We love what we do.
We love our designers and their visions. We love sharing their collections with our clients, whom we enjoy styling. We love having ownership of something that brings people pleasure. We love the fact that we have built something from nothing and are succeeding (knock on wood) at a time when success is rare. We love the fact that we participate in every single facet of our business, from washing the floors to checking in merchandise, from managing the paperwork and creating our website to traveling the globe on buying trips, exhausting as they may be.
And to give that socialite credit, it is true- it does not really matter who we are; we love what we do and, in conveying that enjoyment, we have found something that resonates profoundly with our clients.
Glamorous? No.
Rewarding? Without question.
Sharon Watrous is an owner/buyer for chalk boutique in Evanston, IL.
