Haute Shit

You’d think that I understood PR, especially since I’m now apparently working in the industry (corporate clients, not fun stuff), but I don’t, except to say that someone must be putting in extra hours for Vosges Chocolates. It’s not like they’re new (I did buy a friend a box for her birthday a few years ago), yet every Valentine’s candy related article I’ve read (ok, it’s not like there are hundreds of them) in the past few days has mentioned the company famous for using ingredients like wasabi and naming a collection after million dollar sperm donor Vincent Gallo.

Of course, now I can’t recall any of these mentions except from Apartment Therapy’s The Kitchen, Gothamist and yesterday’s Critical Shopper column written by that scary gazillionaire who lightheartedly wrote, “Until December I had not really eaten chocolate for about 10 years. A gift of chocolate was, I believed, a veiled and hostile gesture to make me fat.”

It’s inane omissions like that, that forces me to read the New York Post. Post columnists wouldn’t write about denying themselves chocolate for a decade. Food phobias like that drive me batty, I just can’t hear or abide that kind of nonsense. The kind of person (woman) who thinks that presents of chocolate are hostile is beastly. It shows the inner workings of their fat and sugar-deprived minds because a run of the mill individual would likely be happy with chocolate unless they were diabetic or allergic. That someone would even conceive of candy as mean spirited implies that’s the sort of passive-aggressive way they’d act out. Like not-so-innocently giving someone a dress a size too small, “oh, I didn’t realize you were a six.” Ew, because a six would be really huge and disgusting to someone who hadn’t eaten chocolate since Rent debuted on Broadway (and thinks Alphabet City–or for that matter, uses the phrase Alphabet City–is actually filled with kooky singing and dancing squatters).

Ok, I wasn’t intending to go to town on Mrs. Kuczynski. My original dilemma concerned Vosges founder Katrina Markoff. I’ve been having all these issues lately because I just can’t seem to settle on anything career-wise. No matter what I do, I end up loathing it. So I ask myself like a What Color is my Parachute retard: what would I like to do? Not work in an office, for starters. I’d like to have a product I could sell, but I’m not sure what said product would be. Unfortunately, I’m the opposite of entrepreneurial, have zero business savvy and an empty bank account. So, I’m always awed/annoyed by people who have successful food ventures, and look for the back story.

Like, obviously you couldn’t open a giant flashy candy store inside one of NYC’s most famous department stores if your father wasn’t a wealthy well-known fashion designer. I don’t know the Vosges woman’s background, but when I read things about people my age (usually younger, though, which is even more distressing) who go to France and study at Cordon Bleu, apprentice with renowned Spanish avant-garde chefs and travel around the world for months on end just trying new flavors, I can only assume that they don’t work for a living.

Where others see a fun, fascinating multi-faceted person, I see an irritant. I’m sure Katrina Markoff is a perfectly nice human being, I haven’t seen anything unpleasant written about her (in fact, this piece about Vincent Gallo being mean to her makes me like her more). I’m the one with the problem. I’m just miffed because I’m tormented 9-6 daily while others flit around the globe and make candy.

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