There are moments when you realise the world is a more complicated place than you had previously thought. I had such moment earlier this week when I saw a new doughnut at a concession stand in Hammersmith station: a Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut.
Sure, you could probably get one in a town the size of Padstow. But invent it?
Krispy Kreme, I knew already, is an American chain that sells doughnuts and coffee. Friends returning from London would bring back big cardboard trays of the glazed rings to our West Country school and share them out as rare delicacies. Now you’ll find a Krispy Kreme stand in most petrol stations. Pretty Little Thing, by contrast, is something I am only dimly aware of. I know it sells clothes and that it caters towards the lower end of the market. I’ve seen adverts for the brand on underground tube stations with images of fulsome, defiant-looking young women wearing angular sunglasses and what I believe are called ‘maxi dresses’.
The only possible connection between the two companies I can think of is that their lines of business often invite the same prefix: fast food and fast fashion. Beyond that, I’m at a loss. And yet there the doughnut sat, a pink ring with swirly purple bumps and a unicorn horn. It looked like Kandinsky had tried his hand at illustrating a gynaecology textbook.
I thought of the doughnut again while reading an old Alexander Chancellor book review in which he quotes Ian Frazer’s Gone to New York: ‘Like many Americans, I fear living in a nowhere, in a place that is no-place; in Brooklyn, that doesn’t trouble me at all.’ I have the same sort of fear, which is probably why I live in London. But what exactly is wrong with nowhere? After all, you can still get hold of all the essentials. There is electricity and running water in nowhere, still supermarkets and even the odd restaurant if you’re willing to drive.
What you won’t get is a Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut. Because objects like the Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut are highly specialised products. Thousands of individuals within a supremely complex and integrated economy must be rallied in the pursuit of such a thing. Sure, you could probably get one in a town the size of Padstow. But invent it? You need the full throbbing matrix of one of the most advanced economies on the planet to come up with something as singular as the Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut.
I can’t quite explain why I was drawn to the thing. Partly it was the same motivation as Edmund Hillary’s – ‘because it was there’ – and partly because it seemed so frivolous: an ultra-processed snack rebranded in the colours of a low brow women’s fashion house. What’s more, it was an alien frivolity. I couldn’t possibly understand the values of a person who might want this – the kind of person who is so excited by a website on which she can order a £7 bikini that she feels motivated to buy an associated doughnut. It just seemed so weird. Which is why I decided to buy it.
So in a fit of perverse reverence, I made my way to one of the chain’s outlets. The nice lady in a headscarf didn’t bat an eyelid when I asked for the doughnut. Maybe it’s quite normal to see a man in corduroy trousers with a receding hairline ordering things marketed at teenage girls.
There is a strong part of me that wants to tell you that the doughnut is disgusting. But that wouldn’t be quite right. Yes, the little purple swirls tasted like Superdrug perfume. And yes, I couldn’t distinguish a particular flavour in the sprinklings because of the wince-inducing sweetness. But bizarrely, it had a sort of balance to it: industrial levels of sugar gave way to the limbic-hacking fattiness of fried, dissolving dough.
As I finished it, I felt a kind of grim acidity lingering in my sternum and a light stinging behind my eyes. I was repulsed but also, somehow, satisfied. For £3.60, I had experienced the paradox of urban life: I want to live in a place where I can acquire things I do not want. The world, I thought to myself, is truly a more complicated place than I had previously thought.
Circle of hell / The paradox of a novelty doughnut
31
1
10.05.2024
There are moments when you realise the world is a more complicated place than you had previously thought. I had such moment earlier this week when I saw a new doughnut at a concession stand in Hammersmith station: a Krispy Kreme x Pretty Little Thing doughnut.
Sure, you could probably get one in a town the size of Padstow. But invent it?
Krispy Kreme, I knew already, is an American chain that sells doughnuts and coffee. Friends returning from London would bring back big cardboard trays of the glazed rings to our West Country school and share them out as rare delicacies. Now you’ll find a Krispy Kreme stand in most petrol stations. Pretty Little Thing, by contrast, is something I am only dimly aware of. I know it sells clothes and that it caters towards the lower end of the market. I’ve seen adverts for the brand on underground tube stations with images of fulsome, defiant-looking young women wearing angular sunglasses and what I believe are called ‘maxi dresses’.
The only possible connection between the two companies I........
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