Heard the one about the Saudi princess who skipped out on a $20 million shopping bill and left a $7 million hotel bill? As Vanity Fair recounts in its April issue, Princess Maha bint Mohammed bin Ahmad al-Sudairi did a runner from Paris’ Shangri-La Hotelafter a five-month stay involving 41 rooms and a 60-person strong entourage.
But her multi-million dollar tab was nothing compared to a shopping spree in 2009, when she hit up a string of pricey boutiques and left the shop staff with nothing but an embossed IOU that stated ‘payment to follow’. One lingerie shop was left with a $100,000 bill, and Saudi Embassy officials were forced to settle her debts. The renegade princess has been reportedly banished to her palace by her brother-in-law, the late King Abdullah, away from any pesky Chanel boutiques.
But if there’s one thing I know, it’s that you can’t keep a good shopaholic down. I never thought I’d have anything in common with IRL royalty, but turns out I do: just like Princess Maha, I used to have a totally toxic shopping habit. Except instead of monogrammed Vuitton handbags and Hermes pumps, I used to blow my meagre student budget on fast fashion.
Pair of £14 Primark platforms? All over it. Cute H&M tank top for £7.99? Why not? I’d come back wasted from a night out and log straight onto American Apparel, drunkenly convincing myself that my measly sign-up discount would magically turn a £52 lamé dress into a bargain. I wound up wearing it out once, to a fancy dress party. I was dressed as slutty Tinkerbell. Yep, a real investment piece.
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To top off my ever-growing supply of cheap polyester tops, I’d drop cash on clothes that would make ZERO SENSE outside of the BBC period drama costume department or a Victorian sex club. Think white satin capes, floor-length ruffled goth skirts, and thigh-high leather boots. I still have a headband from Etsy that has two fake taxidermied crows on it. I thought it was very Alexander McQueen at the time. (It wasn’t.)
My mates started out regarding my bottomless wardrobe with delight: ‘You’re always in something new!’ Then delight quickly turned to wary astonishment: ‘You’re in something new? Again?’ My closet stopped just being a clothes rack and some hangers – it expanded to become the floor. Underneath the bed. In the hallways. Slung over staircase bannisters.
It’s a story that Tash, 26, knows well. ‘My clothes were literally taking over my house,’ the former shopaholic remembers. ‘I had a rail plus loads of boxes and drawers and no space, so I just snapped,’ she says. Finally, she called in Clothes For Charity, a donation service that comes to your door. Tash ended up giving away a 13kg bag of clothes and another 28kg bag of clothes and shoes, which she had to drag to the door. It was more than half her body weight.
‘It was loads of old Primark and H&M from my student days which I no longer wore and couldn’t shift on eBay,’ Tash explains. ‘I regret spending so much on clothes. I obv still buy clothes but it is more often one or two more expensive things a month and a couple of cheap basics.’
As for me, there wasn’t a dramatic turning point where I almost suffocated to death under a mountain of Topshop shoe boxes. I graduated, moved into a tiny London box room, and realised that tripping over piles of worn-once clothes in the middle of the night while en route to the loo is not high fashion. It is not McQueen. It’s more like Secret Lives of Hoarders.
Maybe it’s a lesson that Princess Maha has yet to learn. I hope she gets there before she’s stung with another million-pound bill. Because whether you’re buying Primark or Pucci, there’s nothing glamorous about having to hand out an IOU.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.