Bag Smitten

I just recently rewatched the SATC episode where Carrie realizes that she's spent over $40,000 on shoes! She had bought about 100 pairs of fancy shoes like Manola Blahniks, and spent several hundred dollars on each of them. In Carrie's case, $40,000 also approximated roughly all the money she had earned, and she was thus faced with a closet full of shoes and no home in which to put them. (Aiden was forcing her to vacate or buy her apartment after they broke up. Nasty Aiden).

I confess I don't understand the shoe obsession, and I can not imagine a day when I would spend more than $150 on a pair of shoes, and that's my absolute uppermost limit, including what I would spend on knee-high length boots. I'm just not a shoe whore. I have better things to spend my money on, like traveling and investing.

Until recently, I was not a bag whore either, but unfortunately I think I've been bitten by the bug. So far, it hasn't caused any damage, but it has created great temptation where before there was none. For the longest time, I've had a few bags that I use all the time and most of them are black - it's classy, practical, and matches with pretty much everything I own. Most of them are Coach; none of which have the logo plastered tackily all over them. The most I've paid for a bag is $250, which to my credit is on the lower range of the designer bag market. I know, hold back the applause for my huge accomplishment.

But, for the last few months, I've found myself popping in to bag stores with greater and greater frequency. After being satisfied with black for years, suddenly I'm craving bags in dark blue, eggplant purple, or sea-green. I'm a vegetarian and an animal lover, for god's sake. I limit my milk intake so as to avoid supporting the veal industry, yet my eyes light up at the sight of smooth colored leather. It's terrible. Where does this desire come from? I swear I didn't even have the bag gene before moving to New York, but clearly a mutation has occurred.

Not that I would do anything crazy. A friend of mine recently bought an awesome bag, and I recognized it's utter awesomeness. It had a thick, round braided handle, tons of pockets, a beautiful enormous interior, and was made of soft smooth black leather (not gold, the gold is hideous!). I found myself coveting it and eyeing my much smaller sized black hobo with a flicker of disappointment. That was before I found out how much she had paid: $2,000. Yes, $2,000. On a bag! Not a car. The price tag made my covetous feelings vanish instantly. Thank god.

This morning, another bag caught my eye and I complimented it's owner. It was a gorgeous pale, but deep, purple color and looked a lot like the bag pictured at the top of this post. She told me that it was a Balenciaga (Ally Bean, everyone does that), and I filed the name away to look up later. Imagine my disappointment when I realized the bag costs $800.

Hmmph. At least I have good taste.