Arianna

My name’s Arianna, the object that I brought are these beautiful Christian Louboutin shoes. I brought them not because they’re beautiful and not because they’re Christian Louboutin shoes but I brought them because they are the inception of a business and a life for me. I’ve had them for 10 years, they’re not my size, I can’t get my foot into them and, obviously from the sole, the woman who had them before me also couldn’t wear them and did not wear them, despite having paid $2,000 for them. The beauty of them seems to have gone farther then any sense of practicality. I bought these shoes along with an entire wardrobe of things from a woman a decade ago, who lived in Tribeca and I read a listing on Craigslist. At the time, I was supporting myself as a sculptor by selling objects that I found in thrift stores and on Craigslist, on eBay. This was not really a business but it was a way of making an extra buck and paying rent. I saw this listing and a woman had fallen in love and she was ready to give up her high-powered vice president executive career here in New York City to move to Topanga Canyon in California with the man that she wanted to start a family with. She wanted to sell off all of the objects that had become a part of her single New York girl lifestyle. I went to her apartment and spent a couple of days going through her closet and talking about all of the moments.

I think that these shoes, she bought when she was at a concert that she and all of her girlfriends went to. I think it was the Dixie Chicks. They all went to see the Dixie Chicks together and then they all went to Christian Louboutin and they bought these shoes in matching sets and she never wore hers. So after she kind of found this cathartic moment approaching her closet, I gathered these items and bought them from her, dozens of pairs of shoes and dozens of sweaters and dresses and all sorts of things for $4,000. Which was at the time was an enormous amount of money to me, I think my hands were probably shaking as I wrote the check, and from that moment from that $4,000 investment I really launched a company. I launched a company that is now many years old, almost 10 years old. It’s a vintage clothing and consignment company and it’s supported me and my life in New York. It’s supported my career as an artist and my exploration of the city and supported me becoming where I am now in my mid thirties and no longer in need of fancy Christian Louboutin shoes.

I am at the moment in my life where I’m actually deciding to close my company to start something new and I’m insuring all of these trappings of my single girl New York lifestyle in order to do something different. So I felt it was a particularly appropriate object to bring out of all of the things that I bought from this woman and most of the other things I’ve bought from so many women, whose closets I’ve been through and all of these years I’ve now sold and they’ve gone to another home, to their third home, to begin a life belonging to someone else and to tell those stories. But, this one piece I couldn’t let go of, so they’ve been sitting on my bookshelf for 10 years, telling the story of when I launched my company and now they’re telling the story of when I’m closing my company. That’s my Worn Story, I guess it’s not very Worn Story, it’s an Un-Worn Story.


Originally recorded in occasion of the Worn Stories talk at the Brooklyn Fashion+Design Accelerator. See the videos here: https://vimeo.com/album/3343377


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