Melbourne is certainly living up to its reputation as the nation’s capital for “fashion-forward” retail of the heaps glamorous and expensive (à la Alex Perry) kind thanks to what shall from hereon in be referred to as – and what I’m now dubbing – Gaspgate. If you haven’t heard, Gaspgate centres around retailer Gasp Jeans (“the brand behind fashion newest genre “Playful Couture””), and in particular, their unorthodox views on customer (dis)service, retail and Fashion with a capital F (where ‘F‘ stands for ‘Fugly‘ and you don’t pronounce the ‘ashion‘).
Here’s the low down: bride-to-be Keara O’Neill and her gal pals were out hunting for bridesmaid dresses when they entered the Chapel Street store, only to be “pounced upon” by a male staff member, later identified as “retail superstar” and “qualified stylist with a sixth sense for fashion,” Chris. According to O’Neill, the over-enthusiastic Chris with his initially helpful behaviour gave way to totally-inappropriate, middle-school-style insult Chris who, after O’Neill wouldn’t follow through on a foreseeably ill-advised purchase, resorted to blatant badgering of the sales-assistant kind (“You should just get it. Is it the price you’re worried about? With your figure I think you should buy it.”) before yelling after the fleeing O’Neill: “Have fun finding something at Supré!” Really, dude? That’s on par with painfully familiar schoolyard aphorism ‘I know you are, you said you are, but what am I?’ Whoever does the PR for Supré needs to get on that, repurpose it for an upcoming ad slogan and get in touch with me.
O’Neill’s subsequent email complaint was followed up by an equally juvenile response pretending at sophistication, resulting in countless republications full of these guys ([sic]) causing the emails to go viral and garnering attention from the news media in Britain and the United States as well as registering high on that renowned cultural barometer, Sunrise.
Highlights from the response email include:
From the very outset, one thing that you should be mindful of is; Our product offerings are very, very carefully selected, so to ensure that we do not appeal to a broad customer base.
The reason for this is to ensure that we only carry products which appeal to a very fashion forward consumer. This by default means that the customer whom is acclimatised to buying from “clothing for the masses” type retailers, is almost frightened by our range, sometimes we have found that this type of customer, almost finds our dresses funny, and on occasion noted comments such as ‘it looks like a dead flamingo‘. When we receive comments like this, we like to give ourselves and our buyers, a big pat on the back, because we know we are doing our job right, and modus operandi is being upheld.
Our range is worn by A list celebrities to the likes of Kim Kardashian, Selena Gomez and Katy Perry to name only a few. Now, as one might appreciate, the style counsel for these types of celebrities are not ones to pick “run of the mill” type clothing … Similarly these items are priced such that they remain inaccessible to the undesirable.
Chris’s only problem is that he is too good at what he does, and as I am sure you are aware, people whom are talented, generally do not tolerate having their time wasted, which is the reason you were provoked to leave the store.
Chris is a retail superstar, who possess unparalleled ability, and I am sorry you feel upset by him, but he knew you were not going to buy anything before you even left your house.
If you would like to do us any favours, please do not waste our retail staff’s time, because as you have already seen, they will not tolerate it. I am sure there are plenty of shops that appease your taste, so I respectfully ask that you side step our store during future window shopping expeditions.
Interestingly, beside generating numerous hash-tag trending topics and the creation of Facebook groups calling for a boycott of Gasp, the story has prompted other victims of the Gasp Experience to come out of the woodwork. This morning on Sunrise, a similar email exchange revealed that incredibly talented, and apparently psychic, retail superstar Chris yelled ‘Fat Bitch!’ at a pair of customers who declined to buy a pair of dresses thrust upon them, following up his comment with ‘Look at what you’re wearing. Let me find you something to wear so you can dress good for once in your life!” Dress well, Chris, dress well.
Similarly (and bear with this six-degrees of separation scenario) the babysitter of the children whose parents own the Gasp company has publicised some very telling experiences of her time working for the family, describing them as:
…Absolutely disgusting people – nouveau riche, neglected their children, spent their time out gambling and drinking and were dismissive of everyone and everything. On the rare occasions that I met the people who worked at GASP, I wanted to punch them all in the face – they were hired on how ‘hot’ they were, rather than on their actual character.
Gasp spokesman Matthew Chidgey spoke to Sunrise about the company’s delight at (apparently) increased store traffic: “Our shops are packed, everyone knows us now and I can’t thank her [O’Neill] enough for what she did for us.’ The company even posted a CCTV photo on their Facebook page this morning to keep up appearances.
Right, packed. Although the whole thing reads something like an episode of Summer Heights High, what with the Ja’mie King Supré jokes, the ‘Fat Bitch!’ punchlines and a employment criteria grounded in ‘hotness,‘ (“Do you know what I mean?“) what remains to be seen is whether or not the whole Gaspgate saga will test the time-honoured truism that there’s no business like no business all publicity is good publicity.
