Buzz Bissinger’s Shopping Addiction

The most expensive leather jacket I own, a Gucci ostrich skin, cost $13,900. The most expensive evening jacket I own, also from Gucci, black napa leather with gold threading, cost $9,800. The most expensive leather pants, $5,600. The most expensive jeans, $2,500. The most expensive pair of boots, $2,600. The most expensive pair of gloves, $1,015. Gucci by far makes up the highest percentage of my collection. The Gucci brand has always held special power for me, ever since the 1960s, when the Gucci loafer with the horsebit hardware was the rage, and my father, who fancied himself as being anti-status when he secretly loved it, broke down and bought a pair. Followed by my mother’s purchase of the famous Jackie O. shoulder bag. As a 13-year-old, I circled the old store on Fifth Avenue several times before getting up the courage to go in and buy a Gucci wallet covered with the insignia.

This story about Buzz Bissinger’s shopping addiction in GQ is totally crazy and surprisingly frank, and is a fun thing to read during lunch today while we’re all eating our sad sandwiches and bag of baby carrots. Bissinger says he tracks his finances meticulously and has every category under control except for clothing. He estimates that he spent a quarter of a million on clothes over the course of two years, and, well, it’s much more than that.

I see the collection, and the pheromones of hot clothing defeat the part of the brain that rations rationality — there is the deliciousness of desire overcoming, shall we simply say, overdoing it. I have to have it. I don’t have to have it. I need it. I don’t need it. I can afford it. I can’t afford it. It is the cycle familiar to anyone who fetishizes high fashion.

I won’t spoil it for you, but it looks like Friday Night Lights gave Bissinger a lot of money to burn, and he was more than happy to burn it on leather clothing.

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