Stuff ‘n Nonsense – The Woolworth Heiress & the Cathedral of Commerce

 I was walking past the soon to be defunct Brixton branch of Woolies last month watching people snap themselves in front of the shop shutters, shutting for the last time and I got to thinking about stuff.

Inside the shelves were as bare as Old Mother Hubbard’s cupboard, save for a few things you’d have to pay people to buy and I thought of the stuff infesting my pre-purged room. Stuff waiting to be adapted, adorned and updated, mostly with other stuff I’d buy from Woolworths on the way home from work. Stuff which I enjoy mending and making into more stuff I will enjoy wearing, but which I suspect may actually be the stuff of procrastination.

Oh, the path of procrastination, how familiar is its meandering terrain…  I used to procrastinate by way of creating the perfect capsule wardrobe. Now I am creating an ethically sound and spiritually up-lifting wardrobe and I have to stop and ask myself, is this more stuff ‘n’ nonsense? Am I seeking a material solution to my immaterial desires?

Because if there was ever a cautionary tale concerning the trappings of excess – or stuff – then it is that of Barbara Hutton. Babs and I first met on the cover of Tatler. Well, actually, it was a modern-day zebra-striped, fur-clad, jewel-dripping, forties-style faux Babs; perched neatly in the white tuxedo-ed arms of a Gillette-the-best-a-man-can-get guy in wayfarers; their perfect smiles glinting against the painted desert backdrop. The strap line read ‘Too Rich to Walk’.

Barbara was the granddaughter of Frank Woolworth, founder of the Woolworth discount stores, known more familiarly as Woolies in the UK. And she was the Woolworth Heiress  life-couldn’t-get-better-than-this American dream princess.

Cathedral of commerce

When Barbara was a little girl she found her mother dead, like a discarded doll, on the bathroom floor – broken spirited, broken hearted. Her daddy deserted her. Her aunts passed her around like a mis-addressed parcel. While her grandfather, Frank, was ever busy with business and building his ‘Cathedral of Commerce’ – a Neo-Gothic tower of Babel, the tallest building to grace the golden streets of the Big Apple, the tallest building in the world, poking up through the clouds, like a finger held up at heaven.  Only to be trumped, in a New York Minute, by the futuristic, crystalline Cathedral of Cars, the Chrysler building.

Eventually over-shadowed by the World Trade Center the Woolworth Tower was relegated to making cameo appearances in feature films like Cloverfield, where it played itself crushed under foot by the Godzilla-gargoyle-esque creature as if in some sort of hubristic retribution only mildly worse than the American-based stores becoming Foot Locker.

More recently the building has found its acting niche, playing the headquarters of Mode magazine in the US TV series Ugly Betty. What with frivolous fashion being shorthand for crass consumerism the building seems fated for such a role. And I cannot help but imagine the tormented ghost of the Marie-Antoinette-esque Millionaire Heiress haunting its [s]hallowed halls.

Dubbed the Poor Little Rich Girl by the mock sympathetic press, Babs sought solace in upmarket candy stores Cartier, Asprey and Van Cleef buying the love she’d been deprived of as a child, marrying numerous husbands including silver screen Prince Charming Cary Grant, who said:

‘Barbara surrounded herself with a consortium of fawning parasites – European titles, broken-down Hollywood types, a maharajah or two, a sheikh, the military, several English peers and a few tennis bums. If one more phoney earl had entered the house, I’d have suffocated.’

Being an American Dream Princess is not enough when you feel worthless.

And so Babs did not live happily after, dying pretty much penniless. Her Regent’s Park pad, in some curious homage to the American Dream, becoming the U.S. Ambassador’s London residence.

I guess the stuff of dreams, the immaterial, best-things-in-life-are-free stuff we truly yearn for, is often mistakenly believed to be the material stuff we convince ourselves our [American] dreams are made of – a bit like the rubbish dump the short-sighted mole has mistaken for a fairytale castle in an animation I saw some years ago. Stuff in itself isn’t bad, but it can be a glaring distraction that can tempt you to over-look the wardrobe for the clothes.

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Fear & Loathing in Marks & Spencer’s – Where have all the Good Pants Gone?

Angst In My Pants:
Part 2 – Pants
An ill-fitting or unsightly pair of pants can  curb your enthusiasm no end, just as the perfect pair of everyday drawers can help you work, rest and play. Their inherent power is such that not only do superheroes sport briefs, but some have long since worn them over their tights – with pride.  Like the power behind the throne and all that, the role of pants is kinda taken for granted and they are used and abused with little to no thought, until one dares to bare, or they reveal themselves, usually via VPL or low slung slacks.  But more worryingly still, aside from causing low grade unease, according to the film, More than Pretty Knickers by Eco Boudoir, a really bad pair of pants can be bad for the planet.  Yes, the humble brief can be a toxic, energy guzzling, sweatshop produced menace.

So, armed with the knowledge your knickers could be more evil than Evel Knievel you try to find some kinder, ethical, eco-friendly, everyday underpants at a reasonable cost to you and the environment. 

How bad are your pants?

This, dear reader was my pant plan.  Setting out with a jaunty air of optimism and anticipation at some planet-loving pant action  I entered the underwear aisle of ‘your’ M&S only to have my hopes dashed and my plans foiled.  The place was awash in Fairtrade Cotton t-shirts and vests, yes, but knickers – nada.  I had hitherto not considered such an eventuality and this left me stumped.  The question was: where could I get me some good-for-everything, everyday briefs at an ever so nice price?

Fear not! I not only come armed with some good pants solutions, but also, I have some brief advice as to finding your perfect partner in pants anti-eco-crime.

Colour
The 70s penchant for the beige and brown colour palette has left a certain someone I know marred by the memory of being presented with a pair of brown y-fronts adorned with a fetching stamps of the world print, trimmed in orange – not to mention some vague consternation at his mother’s misguided notion that he was into philately. 

Everyday underwear should be understated, colour wise, I reckon, but, also there’s the whole dirty dye issue, which begs the question, do your patterned pants have something to hide?

The 70s was pants for pants

Fabric
Same guy, same pants, that other 70s obsession, nylon knickers, and a pair of polyester slacks, with cowboy and Indian print pockets – result:  sweat pants.  How a pre-pubescent boy could perspire that much has a remained a mystery to this day, but he has harboured a grudge against them postage stamp pants ever since. 

Cotton, of course, is the fabric of choice – as it’s supposedly kind to your behind, but it’s not always so great for mankind.  More sustainable fabrics like bamboo and Lenpur, a fibre made from cultivated tree clippings, are becoming popular alternatives – whatever doesn’t tickle your fancy is key to fabric choice… ahem.

Style & Fit
Once, on a camping trip with my family, I awoke to find I was wearing a huge pair of man’s olive green, tanga pants.  Was this a Jekyll and Hyde type situation I wondered vaguely. Had I been a fully grown male at night, only to awake my usual seven year old, girl self in the morning?  The truth was only slightly less sinister.  My little sister, her mind ravaged by days of Devon’s version of Deli Belly, had been awakened in the night by some strange grumbling noises she cunningly detected were coming from the vicinity of my knickers – this information from the same person who heard Rudolph get his antler stuck in the chimney.  So, naturally, given her past performance, my bleary-eyed parents took her at her word and finding it to be completely unfounded, continued in their somnambulist states to put me in some over-sized, misshapen, manky coloured dad pants – eergh.  So, yeah, style and fit maketh the pant.  

Go commando? I don't think so...

How to Wear
First wear your own.  Second wear one at a time – the aforementioned sister once wore about ten pairs she had taken a shine to, only for them to slide down her legs, gather in a heap at her feet and slip off into the street as she was being pushed along in her buggy.  Third, wear, some… If you’ve negated to wear your knickers, do not hold your skirt aloft in the middle of the Post Office and announce, ‘Mummy, mummy I’m not wearing any knickers!’ to all and sundry.  The apparent power inherent in going commando is totally diminished by scenes like these, but then again, going commando is pretty overrated unless you’re doing it for the fear factor – for most of us a good pair of pants is like an adult security blanket.

The Good – Bog Standard – Pant Guide
Make your tatty tees into new knickers – supernaturale
Say ‘pants’ to poverty and be a real do-gooder in the Pants to Poverty, Purely Natural, organic and fairtrade pants
Bag yourself some anti-bacterial bamboo briefs – Spirit of Nature

Part 1 – Bras

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