So on Saturday, we went to Chester ostensibly to get a present for my sister-in-law's birthday, but also just to get out and enjoy the sunshine. It's that time of year when you have to run out and bask in the sun whenever you get the chance, what with the constant rain and barely six hours of daylight. Sigh. I personally prefer to sit in and keep warm and watch the tits who think wearing four layers of clothes is better than staying inside, wearing some fuzzy slippers and drinking a hot chocolate.
Anyway, we got the train and it looked like everyone else had the same idea. The train was surprisingly full and Chester city centre was a bit manic. A lot of the mania was thanks to tourists, since Chester is a historical city, full of Tudor buildings and Roman ruins. Admittedly, it is a lovely place and the buildings are listed, so you have all these shops in the original tudor construction, complete with uneven floors, bumpy walls and super-low ceilings. It's kind of cool, methinks.
I'm woefully off-track here so I'll try to rein it in a bit.
The reason why we ended up in Chester and not say, Manchester or Liverpool was because the sister-in-law (I really must think up a suitable nickname for her) wanted either iTunes vouchers or a gift voucher from this shop, Jack Wills. Now, when she first requested this, I was like "What the hell is Jack Wills? Sod it, just get her twenty-five quid in iTunes vouchers and leave it." Turns out that Jack Wills is a fashion chain, and their nearest branch is in Chester. I'd never in my life heard of this store so not only did Mr Bunny have to ask her what the hell she was talking about, I had to google it. Well, let me tell you I was not impressed in the least. Firstly their prices are ridiculous- I saw a dress for £730! And it wasn't even a nice dress! So we decided to actually go to Chester, kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.
After the obligatory stop in Primark, Marks and Spencer's, Topshop and French Connection we found Jack Wills and went inside. And it was shit.
Jack Wills appears to want to be the British Ralph Lauren or Tommy Hilfiger, complete with exorbitant prices but with none of the brand recognition. I consider myself to be pretty au fait with well-known international brands. Mr Bunny would say I'm a brand whore, but that's just semantics in my opinion. I've always liked to wear 'name' products, ever since I became aware of the concept. So we used to wear LA Gear or Nike or Reebok or British Knights. Then I went through my phase of being 'understated' so I would only wear Keds. You had to have a 'genuine' rasta bag (though I don't really know what made one bag more genuine than the other. The length of the salesman's dreadlocks, perhaps?). Folders had to be Trapper Keeper. Then there was the whole 'choonky bag' phenomenon but some memories are best left repressed.
Now, I'm a grown-up and I still like to make sure my clothes and shoes are from reputable stores. I mean, yeah I shop at Primark and I rock the hell out of my five pound jumper or eight pound pinafore, and I worship at the altar of Topshop. But I'm awesome. I can get away with it. When I do want something classy and well made, I head for a place people have heard of. A lot of my winter wear is Ralph Lauren and I have a few Tommy Hilfiger polo shirts. When I worked, I had a couple of lovely Burberry shirts. The combined worth of the four handbags I use the most work out to about thirty-five hundred pounds. I bought two pairs of shoes from Russell & Bromley and nearly passed out when I got to the till and the girl told me the total, and Kurt Geiger has a fair amount of Mr Bunny's money. While I don't own any clothing from a major designer like Prada or Versace, I do know who they are. They've earned the right to charge ridiculously high prices. Their clothes are quality and amazing... a bit like me. *wink wink*
So what was this ill-thought out rant really about? The fact that Jack Wills thinks that by putting leather labels on some ugly plaid shorts or a tartan duffel bag, he has automatically earned the right to charge eighty-five quid for said items, I think says a lot more about the douchebags I saw in the surprisingly lengthy queue, than about Mr Wills himself. But why do I think he's imitating Ralph? Well, you know how Ralph has the polo ponies? Jack Wills has some sort of bird in a top hat and carrying a cane. You know how Ralph likes stripes in bold, contrasting colours? Jack Wills has stripes in bold contrasting colours. You know when you walk into a Ralph Lauren store, and it's instantly 'horsey'? There might be a saddle, some polo sticks or riding crops, and the mannequins will be in jodhpurs and riding boots. Well, in Jack Wills there was a pair of ice skates, a lacrosse stick and other assorted tat too dull to even remember.
But what shocked me the most, is the sheer number of people in the wretched place. When we first walked in, it was buzzing. But hey, everyone likes a browse, n'est-ce pas? It was only when we went to the join the queue to pay, I realised just how many knobheads there are in Chester. After three minutes of waiting, I was like "Fuck this. Just buy her some sodding iTunes vouchers so we can get the hell out of here." In an odd display of patience, Mr Bunny suggested we go to Starbucks, wait it out then come back. He is very cunning, because he knows that promising me a Hazlenut hot chocolate with whipped cream on top, will get me to agree to many things. So I had my hot chocolate, watched an obese barista throw out some croissants and pain aux raisins, imagined her going back to the bins after everyone had left and fishing them out so she could hoover them up, while Mr Bunny had a filter coffee and read the paper.
We walked back to Jack Wills, only to discover that even more tits had been suckered in, and the queue was even longer. I wanted to shout out "If you want clothes that look like Ralph Lauren's SHOP AT RALPH LAUREN!! The Big Pony Collection is ACE!!!!" But I felt that that would have been frowned upon by the shop staff who forget that they're earning minimum wage selling rip-off clothes and clearly feel that the only reason they haven't been recognised by the Nobel Prize committee is due to a mere oversight. They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but I wonder what Mr Lauren would make of the wholesale theft of his 'look'.
Anyway, we waited for what seemed like the rest of my natural life, and Mr Bunny swiped his card for a fifty quid voucher. As we were leaving however, I made my peace with the whole thing, by realising that my sister-in-law would fit in perfectly with the clientele there. The downside, is that this gift will be handed over during the dinner from hell.
But on the way home, we stopped at a chippy and I had what can only be described as a tower of chips. Saturated fats make everything better.
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