Finding Alexander

Last week we lost Alexander McQueen. I can tell you all now, because we found him. Bright and shiny, patent-purple leather with gold-edged trimming, McQ (a.k.a. an Alexander McQueen handbag from the SS08 collection) went into the chaos that is BAZAAR’s fashion cupboard and then… was gone.

As the days passed and more and more people were quizzed, the situation began to look a little dire. As the intern it was my job to track McQ down. Kinda hard to do when I had never seen the bag in the first place – it had been sent in by their press office and discarded to the cupboard before I had a chance to glimpse it. With the fashion girls denying they’d ever seen it either, and the girl who the bag was delivered to being out of the country for a week, I emailed round the office a plea for assistance – no reply.

The next day the girl from their press office called, “Have you finished with your shoot? Could I send round a bike to pick up our bag?” Ummmm..... Hmmmm….

In these situations it’s best to delay. So delay I did. But once off the phone I felt a little panic was in order. Worst case scenario the bag was gone and we’d be up for 600-quid. Best case scenario the bag was still somewhere in the cupboard, although unlikely as we’d literally turned the room upside-down.

With the girl from the press office calling first thing the following morning I laboured over all of the pink receipt slips filled-in by Fashion when returning items – nothing! Next step was fast-forwarding through a week’s worth of security footage. After thirty minutes, my eyes were watering and the footage was blurry, and I’d only managed to get to 2:48pm on Monday. The decision was made by the powers-that-be that I call the press office and admit defeat.

Timidly the girl said she’d have to speak with her boss about the extent of our liability. I asked for her to email me an image of the bag for me to pass around the office – a last ditch attempt in a seemingly hopeless situation.

And then out of the cloth-wonder one of our fashionistas found a pink slip for a patent leather bag sent to another illustrious designer's PR. She called… and they had it. They’d had it all week. Apparently they thought BAZAAR was now gifting press offices with other designer-wears. Needless to say we asked them to send McQ straight back and I got to tell the boys in security that they could stop scouring the tapes. The poor guys had almost made it to Wednesday.

I’m not sure about the moral for this story. Maybe it’s not to rely on fashion girls to be able to decipher their Loub’s from their McQ’s, or maybe it’s not to leave things in the fashion cupboard in the first place. Or maybe it’s simply to accept that in the mag world you’re likely to develop stress ulcers over pretty little things. Maybe I need another holiday.