Hermès
The sun streamed through my hotel room, the piercing yellow beams forcefully waking me up from a restless lie-in that I had been attempting for the last hour. I turned away from the sun and covered my face with the fluffy down pillow. This proved successful for about fifteen minutes, ultimately resulting in an exasperated sigh.
“There’s no point sweating into these sheets,” I muttered. Grumbling, I rubbed my eyes open and delicately lifted myself off the bed.
“This room has quite a Parisian feel to it in the sun,” I mused, looking around at the wooden furnishings and the beige upholstery. The room had a faint pine fragrance that seemed to seep into every nook and cranny of the wood.
In fact, I was thousands of kilometres away from Paris, in Turin, enjoying a sunny autumnal holiday. It had been the perfect confluence of cheap flights, plenty of sights and activities to entertain, and budget accommodation.
My room was on the fourth floor, and I ventured a peak out of the window only to be met with a mesmerising scene of the city basked in the orange glow of the morning sun. The church spires, the royal palace – simultaneously ablaze in the sun and shrouded by wisps of the early morning mist.
“I think I will walk around the city today. I want to take in the atmosphere of this place,” I loudly proclaimed, smiling at the window, excited with the plans I had made for the day.
I spent the next hour getting ready to the tunes of ABBA.
“I look cute, good, I’m sure this city could use some eye candy,” I said out loud, and with that unwarranted level of self-confidence, I ventured out into the street.
My first stop, in what I considered to be true Italian fashion, was to the local café across the street for a cappuccino and a pastry
Having carb loaded, I proceeded to walk off the extra calories I had consumed. The brisk morning air was refreshing, but also made me regret not having brought my heavier jacket with me.
“I will have to walk in the sun,” I resolved and proceeded to cross the street in order to feel the sun’s warmth. I felt out of place amongst the morning commuter rush until I entered the main square, awash with tourists.
“Here we go,” I sighed entering my first queue of the day.
Three museums later – including a unique, quirky coffee museum – I was ready to take a break. The blaring midday sun had replaced the morning briskness with a lethargy that seemed to ooze out from every cobblestone. A dense, static heat had begun to fester.
Carefully choosing to walk in the shade now, I made my way to a pasta restaurant that I had spied a few hours earlier. They had tables outside that were serviced by umbrellas, and I managed to grab one for myself, barely beating the lunch rush.
As I waited for my food to arrive, I distracted myself with the timeless past-time of people watching. The professionals in their business suits that were more interested in agreeing business terms than the sights, sounds and smells around them. Old Italian women flaunting their wealth on the streets as they strode to their many social engagements. Young children enjoying a game of football on the streets, a mystery as to why they were not in school. Young lovers canoodling without a care.
My attention was drawn to this old man wearing a bright yellow silk scarf that contrasted with a navy, blue suit. He was stood across the corner of a square, leaning against one of the centuries-old pillars of the post office. He had wavy grey hair that reached his shoulders. His eyes were covered by large, opaque sunglasses. He was holding a book in his hands though I was too far away to read the title.
What drew me to him was the way he kept fiddling with his scarf – like it was choking him but he could not remove it.
“Why doesn’t he just take off the scarf?”, I thought to myself. My lips curled into a smile, it was almost comical how seemingly powerful, yet helpless, he looked. He looked left, then right, trying to spot someone. Eventually, he broke into a grin and strode towards a man in t-shirt, straw hat, and trousers – the vestural opposite of the scarved man. They hugged warmly and the man in the hat pointed proudly at the scarf.
“They must be a couple and the scarf a gift from his partner. How sweet!”, I thought, my eyes melting at the gesture of love.
I didn’t have time to follow the couple any further as my food had arrived.
I had signed up for a tour of the opera house after lunch; the cool, dark interiors of the building were a necessary relief.
The opera house was plush and richly decorated. The luxuriated interiors reminded me of the scarf the man was wearing.
“Maybe I should treat myself to something nice. I haven’t bought myself a present in over a year,” I contemplated. My thoughts wandering away from the tour guide’s melodic explanations.
For the remainder of the tour, I was fixated on the idea of buying a gift for myself, trying to determine what it is I should buy.
Later that afternoon, I stumbled upon an ornate square with exquisite baroque buildings on every side. Amidst the architectural wonders, a bright orange awning with a brown horse-driven chariot caught my eyes.
Of course, there had to be a Hermès store in this baroque square. As a good a place as any to start my quest for a gift.
I felt woefully inadequate walking into the store in my shorts and jumper as a man dressed impeccably greeted me and directed me to the men’s section of the store. The man, Alex, seemed very kind and eager to help – no hint of judgment at my attire.
“They must be used to having tourists walk in all the time, dressed shabbily and sweaty from the excursions of the day,” I thought to myself, breaking into a tight smile.
Alex asked me what I was looking to buy, and having no real need or idea of what exactly it was I wanted, I blurted out, “Scarves”, in memory of the man I had spied at lunch. This led to an unexpected second question regarding the size of said scarf.
“Please just show me the different sizes so I can get a better idea of what’s available,” I said, bewildered at what the various sizes could be. The answer was perfectly logical – a full-length scarf or a neck scarf – how could I be so ill-informed.
Following that misstep, I channelled my mother’s approach to shopping – looking intently at the clothes, making sure to feel them, making some generic comment about the softness of the cloth or the colour of the dye, and making sure to ask the attendant to bring out some more designs.
The scarves were truly luxurious, the fabric felt as light and soft as a cloud, yet when I tried one on, I was immediately boiling with the warmth the scarf provided. Naturally, the topic of price emerged as the next point of consideration.
“Surely, it cannot be too expensive? Ultimately, it’s a scarf and not a shirt or a pair of trousers or a suit. When is the right time to inquire about the price? I do not want to appear unpalatably price conscious, but I also cannot be caught off-guard by the price. The worst would be to rock up to the till and have a stroke while paying,” I thought to myself.
I could feel beads of sweat appearing on my forehead as I fretted with this dilemma.
Alex, however, came to my rescue with a quip about the price of the scarf I was holding and what made it more premium, and obviously more expensive, than the other scarves I had been seeing. A whopping twelve hundred euros that made my eyes pop, but I reassured myself that this was the premium offering, and the other scarves were likely to be much more reasonably priced. I had my opening now to inquire about that reasonable price.
Alex smiled at me and chirped, “Eight hundred euros.” He said it in such a matter-of-fact way as if I was the idiot for not knowing the price already.
“Maybe, people come here with an idea of what they want to buy already; almost like completing a pilgrimage that began with a few clicks online during one’s lunch hour,” I wondered.
I grabbed the smallest sized scarf I could see, one that I really did not particularly fancy, and was told that it cost three hundred and fifty euros.
Alex stared at my face curiously, obviously trying to scrutinise my reaction to the prices and whether I was going to buy anything or not. I was not sure if it was meant as a form of judgment that the prices might be too high for me or as a form of customer insight as to what else could he sell me that might be better suited to my price range.
While he stared at my poker face, my mind was anything but calm and stoic.
“Do I really need a scarf? No. I don’t have a green scarf, however, so it would be nice to buy one. Then again, the whole point of this exercise was to treat myself, which, by definition, means indulging in a luxury and not buying something essential,” my internal monologue debated.
I smiled back at Alex. “Sorry, just trying to decide what is the right size for the scarf and what colour I might want,” I said. His eyes lit up at this and he proceeded to babble about what the various sized scarves could be used for while I receded back into my monologue.
“Oh no, I have committed myself to buying a scarf now. Why did I have to say that? His face was so insistent, I needed to give him something. Anyway, now that I am stuck with this, should I buy the cheaper, smaller scarf that I don’t really care for or the mid-sized scarf that I absolutely adore but that costs more than double the smaller one?”, I pondered silently.
I let my hand glide over the mid-sized scarf pretending to once again be a connoisseur of silk and wool while I clutched the small scarf in my hand.
“What other colours and patterns do you have in this smaller size?”, I asked Alex, in an attempt to buy more time and put off the need to decide.
After faffing about for fifteen minutes, touching and feeling another dozen scarves, I had made up my mind to go for the
scarf I actually wanted, the green mid-sized one, and to spend the money for it.
“Why would I waste hundreds of euros on something I didn’t care about?”, cinched it for me in the end, though I was very reluctant in parting with my card at the till.
Alex, meanwhile, grinned foolishly at me; probably a combination of completing a successful sale and duping a willing customer in the process.
I felt very self-conscious with the bright orange bag I was now saddled with while making my way around town, “Were people looking at me? What was going through their minds? Was I being judged?” I dared not actually wear the scarf yet.
After the initial joy of having bought the scarf, the weight of the purchase dawned on me.
“Why have I spent so much money on this? I am sure I could find a green scarf for much cheaper. Surely this is a mistake, what is the returns policy for these items?”, I wondered foolishly.
I had, of course, overrun my budget for the trip, and as the afternoon progressed, financial panic began to set in. I decided to cut costs to the extent possible – no more taxis, lunches were going to be sandwiches from the street stall, just one breakfast coffee a day and limited to an espresso which was the cheapest. This measly abstinence, for the next couple of days, was my source of hope at righting the financial imbalance the scarf had wrought. Innocent delusion was the most apt way of describing it.
Every time I held back ordering my second coffee in the afternoon, I felt this sense of pride, almost as though I was a martyr to the cause of household savings. I walked around chuffed, chest slightly puffed out, eyes almost shut with the lack of caffeine.
And yet those evenings, when I returned to the hotel room, seeing the scarf, and running my hands through it would send an electric current of satisfaction through me. The softness of the silk, the detailed weaving, the full colours – would instantly light a smile on my face, only to be erased the next morning by the espresso I had ordered instead of a cappuccino.
On the last day of my holiday, as I was waiting in the departure lounge for boarding to be announced, I had come to a final stand on my feelings for the scarf.
“What’s done is done. I am the proud owner of this scarf, and I shall flaunt it. Parade the opulence as a form of penitence.”