And it got me thinking; all I require is space to hang what I have and what I purchase,which usually results in an awful lot of shuffling around and doubling up... Anal retentive?She's bloody lucky.
Growing up my Mom was the proverbial shopaholic...bags strewn in hidden closets under lock and key,some surreptitiously brought upstairs away from Dad's glare and quickly dispensed with in her bedroom closet already bulging from the weight of too many shopping sprees. Soon Mom had no room in her closet... and zip up wardrobes would sprout like mushrooms in the night. And when that was no longer enough...her clothes snuck themselves into our closets...
Once we fled the cuckoo's nest,Mom decided that her revenge would be to sabotage our closets and bombard them with her clothes. Complain? How could we...we left home,bare the consequences.
We had a playroom, at the top of the house which was my sister's and my domain. We had individual desk nooks with shelves and drawers each. But when the wardrobe expansion dictated greener pastures, Mom explored her horizon and came up trumps. Remove the desk nooks and reduce it to one ( I was in boarding school at that point) and my sister had her desk/shelf unit set up nicely in another corner so that she could take the expanse of the wall and create her nirvana: built in wardrobe from one end to another.
Chloe Sevegny is an amateur when it came to Mom's holy reign of terror over her wardrobe : if you so much as stepped into her room (strategically placed above the living room...) and so much as turned the key to unlock the closet...she would spring to life like a panther:
" REEEMMMM!?What are you doing in my bedroom!!!" she would boom across the floors and ceilings,her voice like a carillon reverberating in your skull.
The closets we could safely delve into to our hearts content were the ones in "our domain": her finely tuned hearing would switch off because there would hang her "oldies":clothes she was mildly interested in....until I or my sister would appear wearing a piece of her" bored with clothing" ,her eyes would focus,her mind would start to whirl through the archives of her closet and when it came up empty she would ask:
"That's nice...where did you get that from?!"
"Your closet upstairs,Mom...."
"Hmmm....don't ruin it...." or...." I forgot I had that,put it back in my room after..."
With all the magnificent clothes,shoes and accessories she had...the insult to injury would be when she would delve into our meagre (compared to hers...)belongings and insist on wearing my bracelet, Lina's cardigan.... and if we DARED to whinge all hell would break loose.
Of course we were incredibly lucky to have such an extended wardrobe especially when she would invite us in and give us precious gifts of pieces she didn't wear nor want anymore. Fashion was the way Mom expressed herself and she did so with dignified precision worthy of any designer. She shopped therefore she was... and when she passed away and we had to clear out the sacred closets and uncover the hidden gems,some still wrapped up with their tags dangling,did we shed a tear for here was the essence of Mom,her beating pulse....her cologne still wafting from cashmere and Chanel.
Remembering Mom....28 Oct..... 12 years since her passing.
