During the recent women's wear shows I found myself on a bench at Tao Comme des Garçons (Tao being one of the young labels that is being developed under the CdG umbrella) sandwiched between Ikram Goldman, the eponymous owner of a store in Chicago, and Tricia Jones, editor of special projects for ID magazine. All of us looked with great desire at the shoes the models were wearing and whispered our shared product lust. The footwear in question were motorcycle boots wound round and round with studded leather chains at the ankle, and they were kind of cool and kind of fancy and kind of mad (in both meanings of the word), all at the same time.
“I'm not sure what my kids would say, though, if I showed up with them on my feet at school,” I said, picturing the looks of horror on the faces of my seven- and nine-year-old daughters. Sometimes they just don't want to know about any latent biker fantasies a parent might have. My son, who is four, on the other hand, would just think the boots were neat. He's too young to understand sartorial subtext – though when I occasionally attempt to wear a Rick Owens harem-pant-style knee-length playsuit, which is kind of like the hippest LBD, even he looks a bit embarrassed and tells me to change my clothes.
“I used to show up at school in my flight suit,” said Jones, whose children are now grown up. “We also had a car that we patched with rust-resistant paint whenever it got a scratch. The children used to make me park around the corner.”
