Is there anything sadder than the trophy handbag?
Sunday, 5 September 2004
Print
Email
One of the few consolations about not being incredibly rich is that you don't have to find a thousand stupid things to spend your pointless wealth on. An acquaintance of mine once observed that the Beckhams have a tiff over whether David should acquire yet another unbelievably expensive watch or not. Even Victoria, the crowned queen of consumerism, thought five or so top-dollar timepieces should suffice for the average playboy footballer.
One of the few consolations about not being incredibly rich is that you don't have to find a thousand stupid things to spend your pointless wealth on. An acquaintance of mine once observed that the Beckhams have a tiff over whether David should acquire yet another unbelievably expensive watch or not. Even Victoria, the crowned queen of consumerism, thought five or so top-dollar timepieces should suffice for the average playboy footballer.
"Luxury goods" is pretty much a synonym for expensive crap. The depressing answer to "What do you give the man who's got everything?" seems to be a Theo Fennell solid silver Marmite lid. As for the woman who's got everything, you can fob her off with yet another four grand reticule. Is there any single item as emblematic of the chasm between struggling proles and city-hopping plutocrats as the trophy handbag?
This week's damning report on the way Conrad Black plundered Hollinger International to fund his lavish lifestyle is most gripping in its finer details: $23m (£13.5m) to run your own Gulfstream jet could be counted an audacious swindle, but $2,463 (£1,445) on handbags for Lady Black is plainly and pathetically avaricious. There hasn't been such contemptuous disregard for the little man's rights since Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake". Especially when you learn, courtesy of an interview with Vogue magazine, that Barbara Amiel (aka Mrs Black) has a single shelf in her vast clothing closet on which sit a dozen Hermes bags worth in excess of £100,000.
You may ask why pick on the poor old handbag when a rich woman's wardrobe bulges with myriad examples of ostentation. But nowhere is the difference between worth and cost so starkly illustrated as with the designer bag. Jewellery, at least, has actual value in the precious metals and gems that are its components, while couture clothing can justify extravagant prices in the miracles it performs with imperfect figures. But the trophy handbag serves no purpose other than to advertise its owner's wealth and privilege.
Just as Thatcher's handbag became a three-dimensional metaphor for her clobbering of Cabinet colleagues, so the wealthy woman's Hermes Birkin is a symbol of aggressive one-upmanship. Because the Birkin bag (originally designed for actress and chanteuse Jane Birkin in 1984) is the rich bitch's social weapon of choice. Its status-symbol properties are propagated by Hermes' manipulative restrictions on the bag's availability. There is a waiting list to get on the waiting list, which is itself two and a half years long.
And when a bag slave arrives at the top of the queue, she is pathetically grateful for the chance to spend anything from £3,500 to £50,000 for a leather receptacle for lippie. For now she belongs to an exclusive and particularly distasteful club. When a woman dangles one of these monsters from her wrist, it snarls: "I've arrived, but you are nobody." Many media commentators thought Martha Stewart lost her insider-trading case the second she arrived in court wielding a Birkin. Such an identifiable badge of elitism suggested an arrogant woman who believed herself above the rule of law.
Similarly, in Justin Cartwright's excellent new novel, The Promise of Happiness, which charts the disintegration of a well-heeled middle-class family, a prospective female in-law's hidden shallows are tacitly conveyed by her choice of accessory: "Ana arrives; she stands in the doorway for a moment for maximum effect. Good God, she is carrying a green Birkin bag!"
The trophy bag effect has spread its grasping tendrils throughout the competitive world of wrist candy. Terminally insecure fashionistas are urged to sign up to a new rental service, Bagborroworsteal.com, so that they never suffer the social stigma of being seen with the same bag twice. The titles that the website allots to its three grades of membership - "trendsetter", "princess" or "diva" - tell you everything you need to know about the lofty ambitions of its clientele.
It makes me long for my schooldays, when the last word in pseudo-punk chic was the customised canvas fishing bag - a snip at a fiver. My current summer hold-all easily accommodates nappies, novels, change of shoes plus a Pret baguette, and was a steal at £35 from Fiorelli. In a world that still offers some radical consumer choices, why not extend the newly proposed London tariff on 4x4 vehicles to other ostentatious forms of stupidity? Wouldn't the world be a better place if we abolished death duty and taxed all designer bags at 500 per cent?
