Today, we went to the top floor of Barney’s, bypassing the danger zone of the first floor; jewelry and makeup. I could lose my entire life on that 5000 square yards of space, as the glint of the Swarkovski crystals catch my eye, the lariats that go down to your waist, almost bumping you in the wazoo, that suggestive but not slutty kind of necklace that acknowledges your sexuality and celebrates it with gems, but doesn’t require a piercing.
The makeup counter is always a treat, with an unasked for unfairly biased assessment of your looks by desperate aging actress types in need of a commission, who will use your self loathing against you to make an extra hundred without smudging their perfectly applied liquid eyeliner in a Barney’s New York minute. As she bags my brand new Nars Fire Down Below lipstick, the wan, blondish, self starved shopgirl turns to me and says, “You have a lot of broken blood vessels around your nose.” She says it so brightly that I say, “Thank you.” – thinking it is a compliment. She produces a concealer that promises to hide EVERYTHING!!! INCLUDING YOUR FACE!!!! I decline. Once at another Nars excursion, the shopgirl asked, “So, when are you due?” I blanched. My lips turned white. I told her, “I’m not pregnant.” She didn’t say anything. I slammed the Fire Down Below back down onto the counter. I had another tube, albeit the very dregs of one back at home, and I would rather pick out the tiny specks of color with a lipbrush than give that bitch my money.
But today we bypass the First Floor and go to the haberdashery department, right by the restaurant, because the busy businessmen on their busy businessman lunches can’t be bothered to go downstairs to pick up an Armani or a Hugo Boss suit on the way back to their terribly important jobs. There were impressively charming and brassy beautiful Black men working the floor. Suits hang from the blonde wood walls and the guys pulled them out to us for inspection. You’d never seen such glorious tweeds, the bright melon silk of the neckties. We are buried under Gucci pinstripes and pants that break when they hit the top of the shoe so hard tears come to my eyes. I love men’s clothes because they symbolize a kind of power that I don’t have, will never have, but still am able to fetishize.
I am buying a suit for Bruce who is rocking my world with a charcoal pinstripe. It’s Gucci and I don’t have to ask if I can afford it because I just promised myself that it wouldn’t be an issue just now, because the tour is over and I get to go out sometimes and live large and everybody should every now and again. (I am the kind of girl who will go into Chanel and holla – “What you got that I could get for free?!” You might be embarrassed, but who got the illuminating cream samples and the exfoliant packets in the little black bag when we left?)
The guys working for our benefit know the fabric. They got the mad style that makes your mouth dry and your head throb. There is a kind of effortlessness to their style, where it makes sense that they work there, even though they are black, and Barney’s is the whitest place on earth. Seriously though. White people go there to get their white on. So here on the top floor, where they keep the most dope expensive shit is where the Black guys work because they have the style. They have the knowledge. They have the inner aesthetic that tells the boys from the men and that can make a boy into a man and a man into a boy, depending on what the client is looking for. These men know what it means to want to look good, what it takes to look good, find the right touch, the right cut, when it gets to be too much, when too much is all you want. Thread takes on a new meaning and I am are mesmerized by the fucking craft, the glory of the man’s body. The men there knew their job so well that there was no reason to even question their judgment. They were smiling at me, overjoyed and excited, in a way that spoke volumes. I wasn’t white and neither was the man that I brought to beautify (as if he needed help – Bruce is like the most beautiful guy ever). Black men know style. It is the artistry that springs from need. From Thomas Hart Benton paintings, to the alchemy of Andre 3000, there is something about the Black American experience that enriches the landscape of fashion, so much so, you cannot picture pop culture without it. Look at all the kids with their throwback jerseys and oversize pants, labels like Hilfiger, Nike, Adidas, Puma, Kangol – going up higher end to Sean John, Armani, Versace, Gucci – mean nothing at all without the credibility that Black culture has lent to it. Black culture brought so much to the American diaspora, and the white population enjoys all of it, from rock and roll to hip hop, from street fashion to the runway, from style, which is hard won, not easy to maintain, not something to be born from or born of, not something that money can always buy, from the whole idea that something can be ‘cool.’ In fact the birth of the idea of ‘cool,’ is a Black concept.
White people are privy to all the things that Black people have, except for the burden of race. The burden of going into these expensive stores and being watched by the staff like you are going to steal something any second. The burden of not being taken seriously. The burden of having to aim higher, do better, excel in something just by virtue of the fact that if you are a person of color, you must do twice as well to receive half the credit. The burdens are too numerous to mention, too vast to list and too boring to go over. We know all the burdens, yet we don’t always appreciate all the benefits. Today’s shopping excursion was one of those times. They were Black, and they loved helping us, because we were like them, and yet somehow, on the other side, making it, buying the suit they put together so lovingly, to send another brother out into the world, representing, looking like he should, like a beautiful Black man would look if he treated himself like he was the most important person in the world. The way we all should look.