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| Does the perfect handbag, dress or lipstick really exist? | Does the perfect handbag, dress or lipstick really exist? |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Is there such a thing as “the perfect dress”? | Is there such a thing as “the perfect dress”? |
| Sara, by email | Sara, by email |
| Ahhh, The Perfect Dress, The Perfect Shoe, The Perfect Hair, The Perfect Lipstick: show me a fashion magazine that does not promise to reveal one of those things and I’ll show you something that is not a fashion magazine. And like you, Sara, I believed that such a quarry – the perfect something – existed, somewhere, somehow, if only I had the knowledge, time and money to squirrel it out. But then I learned something, and in order to illustrate what I learned I’m going to tell you a fascinating tale about one of the first men with whom I had a serious relationship: Mario, from Super Mario Brothers. | Ahhh, The Perfect Dress, The Perfect Shoe, The Perfect Hair, The Perfect Lipstick: show me a fashion magazine that does not promise to reveal one of those things and I’ll show you something that is not a fashion magazine. And like you, Sara, I believed that such a quarry – the perfect something – existed, somewhere, somehow, if only I had the knowledge, time and money to squirrel it out. But then I learned something, and in order to illustrate what I learned I’m going to tell you a fascinating tale about one of the first men with whom I had a serious relationship: Mario, from Super Mario Brothers. |
| It is possible that some youngsters out there, those born after 1990, are not entirely au fait with Mario (and hi there, youngsters! Welcome). Perhaps they, in this age of Grand Theft Auto, do not fully appreciate the charms of Super Mario Brothers’ two dimensional, vice-free world. It is even more likely that they have never even seen this endearingly flattened world, with its smiling clouds and strange flat trees. Well, like the maitre’d in Ferris Bueller, I weep for the future because Super Mario has the kind of simple charm and easy pleasure that GTA cannot replicate. There’s just something so soothing about playing Super Mario, where the worst violence you’ll encounter is a fire-hurtling turtle, which is so much more civilised than, say, killing prostitutes in GTA. | It is possible that some youngsters out there, those born after 1990, are not entirely au fait with Mario (and hi there, youngsters! Welcome). Perhaps they, in this age of Grand Theft Auto, do not fully appreciate the charms of Super Mario Brothers’ two dimensional, vice-free world. It is even more likely that they have never even seen this endearingly flattened world, with its smiling clouds and strange flat trees. Well, like the maitre’d in Ferris Bueller, I weep for the future because Super Mario has the kind of simple charm and easy pleasure that GTA cannot replicate. There’s just something so soothing about playing Super Mario, where the worst violence you’ll encounter is a fire-hurtling turtle, which is so much more civilised than, say, killing prostitutes in GTA. |
| As you might have gathered by now, I spent an enormous amount of time in Super Mario’s world as an adolescent. On the console, on the Game Boy, it was me and Mario all the way and I invested hours of my young life trying to find that damn princess, always, it seemed, in the castle that was just one level above the one I reached. Until, that is, one memorable afternoon when I finally – finally! – found her. The validation! There were fireworks, there was climactic music – the princess even appeared on screen and thanked me (Mario)! It was immense, I tell you. No winner of the Nobel prize felt as much self-pride as I did that afternoon, seeing the princess liberated at last. I half expected confetti to come raining down from the sky to mark my achievement. But that is not what happened. | As you might have gathered by now, I spent an enormous amount of time in Super Mario’s world as an adolescent. On the console, on the Game Boy, it was me and Mario all the way and I invested hours of my young life trying to find that damn princess, always, it seemed, in the castle that was just one level above the one I reached. Until, that is, one memorable afternoon when I finally – finally! – found her. The validation! There were fireworks, there was climactic music – the princess even appeared on screen and thanked me (Mario)! It was immense, I tell you. No winner of the Nobel prize felt as much self-pride as I did that afternoon, seeing the princess liberated at last. I half expected confetti to come raining down from the sky to mark my achievement. But that is not what happened. |
| No, what happened instead, to my incredulity, was the game automatically started all over again, back at level one, with Mario off on his quest again. I couldn’t believe it. I’d finished it! I’d liberated the princess! And now I was supposed to do it again? I switched off the console in disgust and turned to the more intellectual pursuit of watching Home and Away. That’ll show ’em. | No, what happened instead, to my incredulity, was the game automatically started all over again, back at level one, with Mario off on his quest again. I couldn’t believe it. I’d finished it! I’d liberated the princess! And now I was supposed to do it again? I switched off the console in disgust and turned to the more intellectual pursuit of watching Home and Away. That’ll show ’em. |
| But when I became a woman, I put away childish things. Instead, I replaced my search for the princess in Super Mario land with a new search – a search for the perfect handbag. I’m not entirely sure where this obsession started, or why. Certainly there is no justification for it. Of all the many true moments in Viv Albertine’s brilliant memoir Clothes, Clothes, Clothes … the one that made me feel this woman’s wisdom most strongly was when she detailed her current style. There, listed among references to Topshop, Phillip Lim and charity shops was this little nugget: “Not into bags.” And quite right, too, Viv, I thought. It is simply idiotic to spend money on something that you use to carry money in, that gets dumped on train carriage floors and flung about on your elbow in all weathers. Ridiculous! | |
| And yet, and yet. Maybe it’s because I don’t wear high heels, so designer shoes don’t appeal (why spend money on something that hurts?), and clothes seem too temporal to invest in too heavily, but bags it is for me. Maybe I just really like handbags. I don’t know, there is no way of justifying this, or even explaining it. All I know is, any time I fancy a bit of procrastination these days, instead of getting out the ol’ Nintendo console, I look up classic designer handbags online and treat myself to a bit of bag porn. | |
| So it happened, a few months ago, that I finally finished writing a book and a cheque arrived from my publisher. I promptly took a chunk out of the cheque, got on the tube into town and bought a bag I’d been lusting over online for literally a decade. Oh reader, I had rescued my princess – it really was, as I knew it would be, The Perfect Bag. My search was over at last. I couldn’t wait to show it off so I took it to lunch with two friends who have a similarly highly developed appreciation of bags, and they cooed gratifyingly. Towards the end of the lunch, I noticed one of the friends, Sali, sling a handbag up her shoulder. I looked closer: Oh Lord, it was beautiful. Black and elegant and so grown-up. Making a squawk of despair, I asked to try it – I couldn’t believe it, it was The Perfect Bag. The princess was locked in the castle again and I was back at level one. | |
| So don’t listen when anyone tells you something is The Perfect One, dear readers. Take it from my own bitter experience: the search – heck, the NEED – never ends.ask.hadley@theguardian.com. | So don’t listen when anyone tells you something is The Perfect One, dear readers. Take it from my own bitter experience: the search – heck, the NEED – never ends.ask.hadley@theguardian.com. |