The first time I went to Barneys New York, I was 22 and dropped a week's pay at the Yves Saint Laurent cosmetics counter. The summer before that, I spent a week's pay in one night when I went to Los Angeles for the first time from San Francisco. Although I couldn't afford (or legally rent) a car, I could do a hotel room, and stayed in a junior suite at the Luxe Summit Bel-Air near the Getty so that I could go there. And that's all I did. At the time, I was horrified. I was an intern! A decade on, I still remember it, and it was awesome. I recently bought an exey bottle of perfume and was aghast when the clerk rang it up. At home, as soon as I inhaled an ethereal little puff, I thought to myself how that's the one lesson for a good life I wish I'd understood when I was broke all the time and for the indefinite future. That one nice thing, every once in a while, goes a very, very long way.
[Oversized smoking jacket with ribbon tie, $240 (sale) at ACNE]
Windowlicker - from the French for window shopping: faire du lèche-vitrine - is more or less on summer hiatus, and will return in the fall.
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