HUNDREDS AND THOUSANDS

For two and a half years now, I have had the good fortune (or better, small fortune) of living at one of the trendiest addresses in Manhattan; the West Village. (Also known as 'Hollywood's New York')

Once upon a time, not so many decades ago, 'The Village' was celebrated for affording a renegade, beatnick, bohemian lifestyle; speakeasys, coffee houses... both the cool Dylans. Now, it affords very little to very few. And most of those few work on Wall Street.

However, if you're prepared to live in a cupboard. And sublet half that cupboard to a Finnish movie star. And enter into negotiations with a heavily accented Italian man named 'Tony' when it comes time for the annual rent hike... Then it's what you might consider 'doable'. It's all a matter of perspective after all. As the broker pointed out when showing us the place, 'The West Village is your living room!'

As it turns out, he was telling the truth. And not a bad living room at all. A great Irish bar at the bottom of my building, the best tapas in Manhattan across the street, a laundromat full of non-judmental Korean women ninety seconds away... Best of all is school, a mere ten minute stroll down one of Manhattan's rare tree-lined and winding roads.

Unfortunately, if not planned with the utmost care and focus, that stroll can land you smack in the middle of couture central; the Paris end of Bleeker Street. Coach, Juicy Couture, Cynthia Rowley, Marc Jacobs, and the scene of my latest fashion accident, Ralph Lauren.

By way of background I perhaps need to explain that little dresses, or cocktail frocks, or 'numbers', are my personal Achilles heel. Or, if you will, my crack habit.

Initially I was just a social user, but then the social occasions became more and more frequent, until eventually I was buying dresses at will, in anticipation of the next event, and the next. Of course that led to a small shoe-purchase abuse problem, and had I not been smacked into submission by a return to the student lifestyle in one of the most expensive cities in the world, frivolous purses could not have been far too away.

On a strict 'Sex and the City' repeats 'methodone program', I have managed to stay more or less on the wagon for the past two or so years, with only the occasional slip here and there. (Surely sample sales are considered entrappment?)

Until last Friday.

I don't want to overstate it. It was just a little black dress. Slinky. Knee length. Silk. Not so much in the window of Ralph Lauren, as on a svelte mannequin just inside the brass-handled door, saying 'buy me... buy me'. The word 'Sale' was stencilled on the window in muted tones, engendering the smallest cause for hope.

I resisted for a full 24-hours before dragging my most grounded, yet gentle friend David along to watch me try it on. I needed someone there to tell me I was being insane, without embarrassing me in front of the Waspy, and highly judgemental sales girls.

They had only one. It was my size. I took it into the dressing room and scrounged for the price, which was nowhere to be found on the tag. Great. The only other thing I know to be 'Price on Application' is the sort of Real Estate for which you submit tenders. In short, if you have to ask, you probably can't afford it.

But I did ask, and Kent (not a made up name) went off to check in the computer. I probably had a total of 45 seconds to float around in front of the full length skinny-mirrors before she came back with the verdict,

"Twenty four ninety eight." (The decimal point is deafeningly silent.)

I can't help but smile a little at how the high-end masterfully manage to eradicate words like 'hundred' and 'thousand', and with such transparent devices. Take the the non-sensical irregularity of the price tag - it's not actually intended to trick us is it? They don't expect that we'll blithely hand over the credit card, and be too embarrassed to come back when we get the statement and realise the dress was not in fact sold to us for the bargain basement $24.98?

It's as if to acknowledge it would be crass, or dirty. As if saying out loud that this finely crafted piece of black silk will set you back TWO THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS, would betray some silent code, or break the magic spell of couture. Would a very human, mutual acknowledgement of the extravagant price tag really ruin the fun of the extravagance? Would it really hurt us to be a little more real about the whole thing - after all, Ralph Lauren began life as one 'Ralph Lipschitz', a young lad from the Bronx, who sold ties out of the trunk of a car. So tell me, when did common sense become just plain common?

But Kent is not done. While the dress is unfortunately not part of the sale, the strappy four-inch heels she has grabbed for me to try on 'just for effect' are. More than that, Kent informs me, 'they are a steal'. Even level-headed David has to acknowledge that the reduction from $590 to $144 is fab-u-lous, and I'd be mad to pass them up. (For all my intentions, I can't help but feel I subconsciously took a gay man with me for this very reason.)

So I don't pass them up. I hand over my credit card and sign some form and Kent promises she'll have my size in from interstate before the off-broadway opening of Lynn Redgrave's new show I'm due to attend next Monday. Of course, with what dress I'll wear them (as clearly the little black number went back on the rack) or indeed what business I have wearing strappy satin heels in the middle of winter in Manhattan I have no idea, but I have some drying out to do before I can even contemplate that next (well-heeled) step.