Seeing and Seeking

In 1995, I was living in London, working as a coat-check girl at The Ivy, one of London’s premier restaurants in the heart of the theater district. The Ivy was the place to be seen and each night London’s famous actors and fashionable elite paraded into the restaurant, depositing their expensive coats with me. There I sat, trapped in an elegant oak-paneled box, quietly hanging up the coats of Helen Mirren, Hugh Grant, Princess Margaret, Mick Jagger and Tilda Swinton – who then had long ginger hair down to her waist! Swinton was the rare customer who was always respectful and a good tipper.

I was sealed off from the main restaurant and everyone congregated in the small lobby area in front of the coat check, so I closely observed the hobnobbing, invisible to others. I’d watch as a high-profile agent courted young Alan Cumming, while he left his large golden retriever with me in the tiny cloakroom, lapping at my legs. The coat check space would get so packed, I would literally struggle to move, pushing my body with force through mountains of furs and overcoats. I developed claustrophobia, but still smiled and nightly took home a bag filled with one-pound coins.

This was how I supported myself while living in London, trying to make my first film. Having recently graduated from Oberlin College in a study-abroad program in London with a Cultural Studies and Women’s Studies major in hand, it wasn’t…