Nothing he watches makes him believe he's wrong. Nothing he views offers a compelling alternative vision of the good life.
"I've already won the lottery because I'm in this country," he says. "I wake up every morning and feel as happy as I can be. I've done well. But I can't just sit back and be in awe. I want to keep working, keep expanding. I'm still not running my own company. I still don't have a boat. I don't have a big house. I don't have a vacation home. I don't have cars. I'm not married yet with children. I look forward to all those things. I think that will be the American dream."
Jamie Gavigan, who owns some $20,000 worth of Manolo Blahnik shoes, models her $2,300 satin Gucci dress.
(Photograph by Kyoko Hamada)
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In the meantime, he's planning to renovate his master bathroom, install marble floors and maybe buy a sixth TV to hang over the soaking tub.
"I guess I'm a goal-oriented person," he says. "I like to accomplish goals. That's all I have these days to really measure myself. That's a great feeling to accomplish a goal. You want to be able to do that. Otherwise, I just feel like I'm running on stale. If I don't set any goals, then what am I really doing on a daily basis? It's kind of a ho-hum kind of lifestyle."
At the Gucci boutique at 685 Fifth Ave., it's always bedtime. The lighting is dim, a perpetual retail twilight, and the lingerie-inspired clothing of the moment has the snap and cling of naughty undergarments one wriggles into and laces up tight.
The line seemed a natural for Jamie, who works out and skips meals to keep her body as lithe as any Hollywood A-lister. Hector Carmona, a Gucci boutique salesman she met while vacationing in Aspen, Colo., in March with her boyfriend, had shipped her several of the lingerie-inspired outfits on approval. But nothing fit. When she needed a different size, Carmona couldn't always get it for her because other Gucci boutiques that had them in stock didn't want to give them up. It was a little frustrating.
"We'll have to get to the bottom of this," Jamie says as she cruises the first-floor accessories counters. There's a $1,750 fox purse that looks like a dead raccoon with handles, an $8,000 handbag in green alligator, and a $1,590 bag in black goat skin and water snake that Jamie would like better if it weren't dominated by outsize gold hardware.
Upstairs, two sightseers with sensible shoes finger a $740 sweater. "Banana Republic has one like this on sale, half off, for $34," one tells the other.
Jamie is eager to try on a pale mauve blouse and skirt that she's seen in the store window. The size she needs happens to be in the window display.
"They just put it into the window, and under no circumstances will they take it out," a salesman says importantly.
Jamie finds a black dress and a few blouses and skirts that look promising. Her salesman leads her to a short hallway lined with dressing rooms that terminate at a large mirror. Since she's wearing boots, the salesman hands her a pair of high-heeled black shoes to try with her selections. They're studded, look like bondage props and hurt Jamie's feet.
Jamie struggles out of the dressing room teetering on the uncomfortable shoes and tugging at her outfit, a pale pink blouse with a high collar and peekaboo opening that highlights her prominent cleavage and a tight skirt that fits like a girdle. In the back of the skirt, a curved seam circles her derriere for emphasis. Jamie twists one way and then another before the mirror to try to figure out why the skirt is pulling across her waist in the back.
Her salesman doesn't notice. He's struck a relaxed pose, leaning against the wall and singing along with the piped-in dance music. "Crazy . . ." he sings. "Lazy."
Jamie is on her own. She slips on a long-sleeved, V-neck knit black cocktail dress that is built like a roller coaster, all tight curves and one breathtaking plunge. She smiles at the mirror. "This is really nice," she says. "It fits perfectly."
Jamie closes the dressing room door to try another outfit. "These clothes are so hard to get into and out of," she says through the door. She is beginning to get annoyed with her salesman, who is clowning around with a colleague instead of helping her. She emerges from the dressing room wearing another narrow skirt with a white blouse so tight her nipples show faintly. The blouse has long strips of fabric dangling from the neck and wrist. Jamie isn't sure whether she is supposed to wrap them, tie them in a bow or let them dangle. The inattentive salesman eventually winds the ties around her neck and wrists snugly as if he is lacing her in a straitjacket, the sexiest inmate in the Gucci asylum.
"It must be hard making decisions when you have the idealistic silhouette for our clothes," the salesman coos.
Jamie isn't buying his halfhearted flattery. She wants to get the black V-neck dress, which costs more than $1,300, the white blouse for $900 and some change, and the tight skirt that fits like a girdle and costs at least $1,100. But she doesn't think she can afford it all. She's already made two big purchases for the fall, the $900 white fur evening bag and a $1,700 shearling bomber jacket, both by Michael Kors. If she buys all three of these Gucci pieces, she might have to return the Manolo Blahnik boots she's just bought. She doesn't have a set clothing budget for the year, just a sense of when she's gone too far.
Jamie hands the three pieces she wants to her salesman. "Could you hold those for me until tomorrow?" she asks. "I have to ask my boyfriend."
"My 'boyfriend' Hector," she mutters once the salesman walks away. Whatever she buys, she'd rather buy it from her Aspen salesman, Hector Carmona, let him ship her the things and get credit for the sale. This salesman has let her down.
"I don't want to buy anything from him," she says. "That guy just wasn't enthusiastic. That was almost $4,000 worth of clothes. That's a lot of money. He wasn't even there. I needed help."
Out on the street again it's beginning to drizzle. Jamie drapes her pashmina shawl over her head to protect her blow-dry and sighs. "I found that to be a very disappointing shopping experience," she says.
She takes her cell phone from her Birkin bag. "Let's see what Hector is up to," she says, punching a single button. "You know you are a shopping addict when you have salespeople on speed dial." Hector doesn't pick up, but Jamie leaves a message asking him to call. Then she ducks into Takashimaya, a boutique where she sometimes finds quirky accessories to give to girlfriends as gifts.
"Girl Going Out," declares one banner poster on the store wall.
"I'm Very Me," a poster on the opposite wall says.
She gets on the elevator with a young Japanese couple wearing a cacophony of boldly patterned avant-garde designer apparel, much of it in red, the season's new neutral. The man carries a large red nylon gym bag emblazoned with a single word: "Hostage."
Jamie doesn't notice. She's worried that she hasn't written down the style numbers of those Gucci clothes so she can tell Hector exactly what she wants.
It occurs to her that the black V-neck Gucci cocktail dress would look excellent with the emerald-cut rhinestone silver evening sandals from Manolo Blahnik. If Hector can get her the black dress, she's going to need those size 39s.
"Cameron Diaz has my sandals," she says with mock indignation, "and I want them back."
At the Louis Vuitton boutique on Fifth Avenue, Jamie bypasses the thronged accessories counters closest to the entrance, where teenagers wearing sweat pants and plus-size grandmothers jostle for the right to buy $80 brass key rings featuring the company's signature interlocking L and V and $140 change purses.
