Why are some people so obsessed with designer handbags? This is an age-old question. The answer goes back as far as the first piece of pig skin fashioned into a pouch just that little bit more sturdy, user-friendly and stylised than strictly necessary. It goes beyond the effectiveness of the bag in itself, though. It’s about the fact that everyone in the village then wanted a pouch just like this.
The master maker, being savvy to the ways of the market, saw the demand for the nice bag, and priced it such that few could have it. You see, designer bags are all about having the nicest possible bag, regardless of the cost. The price tag refers to more than the sum of the bag’s parts – in other words, it’s overpriced. Even so, the bag is still the nicest bag on the market, and some people recognise that.
All this might sound about as obvious as a black leather bag on an inner-city executive, and it still doesn’t fully explain the inextricable pull the designer bag has on its devotees. The deciding factor in the mix is the fact that handbags are so closely linked to their owners. For many people, their handbag will go with them everywhere they go, carrying some of their most private possessions – things that could ruin them if other people saw, like balled-up receipts for $90 eye cream made of stem cells.
These things form a living a living mulch in the bottom of handbags the world over, carefully sequestered from the judgements of the wider world. Here’s the kicker, though – this mulch is said to be a key ingredient in the elixir of youth, particularly when sourced from a designer shoulder bag. Buy a designer bag, then, and you’re actually buying a rare and prized ingredient of eternal life.
Just doing that, though, isn’t enough. You see, the secret mulch must be aged for an unspecified time span before it can be used for alchemical purposes. It could be 10 years, 20, even 50… it all depends on the individual bag.