![Awesomeness]()
Awesomeness
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11
What I wanted at Christmas ... and I still wear today
I have been unabashed in my adoration of Lady Stetson. Perhaps it's my stubbornness.
You see, I had a heiress as a friend in graduate school. Money meant nothing to her. But as a working class kid of even more modest means as a young adult, it meant everything to me. Making ends meet until the end of the month was my biggest challenge. But that may or may not be the point.
One Christmas my heiress friend asked her two gal pals (me & another gal, whose name escapes me) what fragrance she could bestow on them. "Chanel Number 5," my one friend squealed. "Lady Stetson," I said. "Just Lady Stetson." For I honestly knew not what to say. A working class kid being asked to name a gift, any gift, with the implication that money was no object.
My beau had bought me Estee Lauder Beautiful, and I hated it, just hated it. Exclamation was my perfume of choice at the time, I think. And before that, Vanderbilt and Oleg Cassini and Enjoli and Charlie. My perfumes were restricted to Walgreens ... on sale. And so was my choice as restricted - Lady Stetson - as I think I had seen it advertised recently for the holidays. It seemed right up my alley.
And a few days before Christmas, the heiress had us over, for treats and cocktails. And there waiting for us were two department store, ribbon-tied boxes, from Marshall Fields no less. My friend, squealed again, and opened her Chanel Number 5. The heiress handed me my package, perhaps with the biggest gift-giving smile I had ever seen. I wondered, had she possibly given me Chanel too? And as I opened it, there was exactly what I had wanted ... Lady Stetson, in all its mass market glory. She leaned over, and said, "I had them give me an extra box." You see, Lady Stetson was not at the department store. The heiress had to make a trip to Kmart. We have been friends ever since. Both me and the hieress and me and the Lady.
No, the Lady is not Chanel 22. She was never meant to be. She captured the imagination of young American women, and I was one of them. But I think I will always remember the Lady for what she is to me ... something I rarely got as a working class kid growing up ... exactly what I wanted at Christmas.
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