Season 2, Ep. 10

Abercrombie & Bitch

Ah that wonderful magical world of Abercrombie & Fitch. 

More specifically, the magical wonderful world of the Abercrombie and Fitch stores. Feels like nothing else is going on in the world when you walk in those stores, doesn't it? ISIS, what ISIS? I have a topless male model staring at me here, bothered. 

For those of you who don't probably know what on earth I'm talking about, Abercrombie & Fitch or also known as A&F is an American Retail brand that sells casual, everyday wear across the world and it most certainly has a unique style when it comes to its stores. Now, 80% of the company's stores are located across America, however the rest of them are around Europe and pretty sure there must be one in Aussie somewhere, but you guessed it right, where there's white people, there's a store. Ahem. I'll get to that later. 

The stores are big, poorly lit and with many floors and it plays extremely loud music and usually dance beats. So if this painted a picture of a club to you, you guessed it right, that's pretty much their aim, to make you feel like you're partying while shopping minus the alcohol. True paradise for the shopaholic, if you're not an alcoholic. Hash tag rhyme. But that's not the MAIN signature style of the stores. Nope, as if the darkness and the loud as music are not enough, the sales people who work on the floor are models. Some proper working models, others are unemployed actors and just extremely good looking students. All in all, beauty galore. Uh-huh. Believe me the eye candy is insane. And to add another little cherry on your cream pie, there is usually a ridiculously ripped guy standing topless wearing A&F jeans at the entrance of each store ready to greet you and take a photo with you. A polaroid. A polaroid photo with a topless 6-pack with a head on it. You don't usually see past the pecks that's why I'm objectifying the person so much. What can you do, looks are looks. And Mr M. Jeffreys-look him up- knows that. I'm not sure if he is still the CEO of A&F but he sure was while I worked there. Oh yeah, I was working there for 6 years. 6 whole years, I jumped from department to department, I did the sales person thing, then I did some dancing-oh yeah-on the floor as well, just, you know, some casual bopping while greeting customers, then I did my share of recruiting beautiful models myself to be part of our campaign and London stores,now that was fun and shallow, then I decided I no longer wanted to feel like a carrot so I jumped into more productive roles like work the stockrooms, shipment of stock, some office work etc. All this in London. The store there is mahoosive. 

Mr CEO current or not, has very strong views on his models aka employees' looks, and not only that, he even has strong views on what kind of customers he likes to target. What do I mean by that? He promoted the all-natural look widely. I have no opposition to that, I believe in natural, clean looks too, so basically he wouldn't allow too much make up, coloured hair, tattoos or facial piercings but he was also too strong about his boys being clean shaven. I am using the word boys here because that's unfortunately how most men look clean shaven.

I mean this sounds all fair until the Muslim girl came along for a job and since she is wearing a head scarf she can only get a job at the stockrooms. And then the girl with the prosthetic arm came for a job too and suddenly she is never allowed on the sales floor during opening hours either. Suddenly the employees that are allowed to be seen all look similar, there was nothing special or different about and in one word perfect. Sounds like an

Aryan race case to me, ahem. Now, whether you agree with me here that this sounds a bit ridiculous or not, the two girls along with tens of other employees with a similar A&F treatment from across the world have indeed sued A&F multiple times for this outrageous manhandling. I swear, I'm not lying look it up. Pretty sure the company has spend millions on compensations it says. And to top it all off, Mr CEO has mentioned in interviews, "I don't want to sell my clothes to poor people and I only want my clothes to be worn by beautiful people". Something like that. Hash tag burn baby burn. Between you and me, not worth it. Clothes overpriced and bad quality, trust me I know. 

And yes I worked there. One of my many jobs for this lifetime was this and I may say after the first couple of years where I established a relationship with my managers who by the way were changing every month pretty much, I lost track, things became pretty cruise-y for me. There were times where I would work there full time and there was times I worked there once a month for a year and then back more regularly etc. You can NOT believe how magical that moment was when I handed in my resignation for me. Tears and everything. TOODLES to A&F, Noodles to you.

There is always positives to every experience, and with this one I take away all the hundreds of beautiful souls I met while working there. "C'est tous"

Ta.

K.

Season 2, Ep. 2

Italia Conti.

 No, I still speak English. Italia Conti is a name. A pretty well known name for the wider London crowd and for a specific artistic crowd of Britain. Aka, my drama school. Full name, Italia Conti Academy of Theatre Arts. Founded by Ms Conti in 1910, with a line of successful, household names for alumni such as Judy Garland, Noel Coward, Peter Duncan, Naomi Campbell, Kelly Brook, Russel Brand, Martine McCutcheon, Sadie Frost, Pixie Lott, Leslie Phillips and of course moi. Har har har. Oh yeah it's a pretty good school. And I attended it in 2010. 100 years after it was found. Hashtag coincidence?

 Now, you must be wondering if Drama Schools are anything like in the movies. Pretty much. Same amount of drama, all of the loudness, all of the strenuous, hard work, same competitive spirit, same amount of bitchiness, love stories, heartbreaks, panic attacks, stories where you fall flat on your face and then rise to the occasion. And if you're wondering which of the above had happened to me, make that all of the above, minus maybe the love story. Sorry, nothing saucy here.

 BUT, when it comes to the competitive spirit, tick. Let's start with that. Number one. There's two types of competitive people. What I call, the good and the bad. The good, they learn to be competitive with themselves. They understand that at the end of the day we are all different, despite similarities, and we all have something different to bring to the table. So they make sure they beat their own version of themselves every day, and make the best out of who they are. Wise and noble ae. But I learnt first hand that this is and will always be and should be my type of competitive spirit. Of course we all have our bad competitive side, where we want to beat others by badmouthing, using strategies and schemes but what I've learnt, is that this competitive spirit, is short-term.

 What happens a lot at Drama Schools is favouritism. Or at least it happened in mine. Every minor showcase we were working on, suddenly more or less the same people would get the solos or the front line, or the best parts. Without auditioning. Nope. Teacher walked in, picked out 7-10 names, and say ''you get a solo, you get centre stage, you get this part", and that would be it. True story. And maybe, maybe, apologies for my slight bitchiness side here, but maybe, they weren't all that amazing or right for those parts, solos etc. Maybe, but hey, one woman's opinion. What did I do? Kept my head down, kept working on my skills and how to make them better. Lesson number two. Badmouthing, showing envy or getting bitchy is a vast waste of energy which leads to having no energy left for yourself and how you can become better. Trust me on this one.

 The end of the year, marked the major end of year show at London's Wimbledon theatre where we could invite not only family and friends but also agents and people from the industry. My year was assigned to a young teacher who used to give us singing lessons throughout the year, in order to create our performance. She was gonna be our director and vocal coach. The day we had our first meeting about our performance, she walked in and basically said "I don't care about favouritism, I don't believe in crap like that, either you are worth it or not and either you are right for the parts or not, you are all auditioning, you are all getting an equal chance to show me what you have". Finally some justice? Long story short, our performance was from the musical 'In The Heights', a Broadway show that had won a Tony Award that year for Best New Musical. Such a funky, fresh show with lots of energy and strong vocals. We all auditioned, I got the part. Ha. Hashtag, eyebrow flare. But that's not why I am telling this story. Besides, story is not over.

That was just the beginning. We had a couple of long months of rehearsals but over those two months, suddenly without realising I was starting to get some hate from some fellow chicks. Out of nowhere someone would put words in my mouth and rumours would start and I was getting attacked for saying something mean about someone when I really hadn't. Being bullied at Primary School, I kinda made sure I was never gonna end up being bitchy about anyone so believe me I was an innocent little shit getting attacked. Lol. And it never dawned on me then, that it was just because of the main part. I had the main part. Mmmm. Energy, wasted.
Anyway, no idea where these chicks are today and what they are up to, I learnt that those relationships were pretty fleeting for me. Hashtag sorry not sorry.

Be the big person. Grow every day, grow your best version of YOU every day. Haters gon'hate no matter what, where and when.

Next week, more drama, awesome teachers and my first panic attack.

Tootles.

Watch performance here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odEVoeiJHac