Part 1

I went over to this girl I’m seeing on the regular’s place the weekend after she got back from a trip to NY. She was excited to tell me about her trip and her little adventures. I did the whole act like I cared thing and listened but was there to score the free pregame drinks and pass time till I banged. She admires my taste in female fashion since she knows I grew up surrounded with women and have strong opinions when it comes to their fashion sense. Then she lit up and went to her closet and came back with her prize purchase from her trip. She reached deep into a black bag and pulled out a Louis Vuitton handbag. I simply smirked and said nice purse. Already knowing the answer I went ahead and asked, “is it real”. louis-vuitton-handbags.jpg “No, silly” she replied. The real one cost about $1,200, she then went into the production history of her knock off LV like a Andy Warhol owner describing the ownership lineage of acquired piece. “This one was made in the same factory as the real ones are made. You see the factories stay open 24 hours and during the day the group that makes the real LV bags works their shifts and then at night a second group comes and and uses the same material to create the knock off bags” (Chinese LV Elves). Pushing the bag in my face, “of course you can tell right here and here the stitching is slightly off and over here the side the Louis Vuitton has this R logo above the name but in the store the real one had France (or maybe it was Paris) instead of the R.” Along with the production history she also went into telling me the story of purchasing the bag. How she had to go to Chinatown and ended up meeting this Spanish dude on the street that made her follow him into some dark alley ways where Chinese ladies wore long black coats and lifted up their arms to reveal Cartier Watches on one hand and Tiffany bracelets on the other. Finally she met the HCBIC (Head Chinese Bitch In Charge) who didn’t actually have the bag but provided her with a pamphlet to pick from and once she picked the HCBIC made a call and told them to go to another street to pick it up. In the end, all and all the whole thing finally cost her $85. When the whole story was done, shorty just paused and I could have sworn a lone single tear rolled down her cheek. You would have thought the bitch was telling a story of how her great great grandfather broke out of a Nazi death camp and fought his way home from behind enemy lines in WWII to be reunited with his family.

Part 2

I gave her the look only a black man can give after hearing such a story, a look that all us black men have and save for hard times like these a look that says exactly what’s on our minds, and that is…. Bitch is you crazy! I could have gone to Wisconsin on Georgetown, talked to a couple of Jamaicans and got you the same bag for $25. But I wanted to have sex that night so instead I said… Let me get this straight you risked breaking the law, following a stranger into an alley, possible being kidnapped like in the movie Taken…. for a knock off? Now I get materialism, I understand it and I’d go so far as to say Men are just as materialistic as women. What I don’t understand when it comes to women’s materialism is the lengths they’ll go through to feed this materialism. Almost like cheap shortcuts that are mind boggling. Now this girl is 23, makes very good money, has her own place, but unfortunately is a Sex and The City girl so she thinks name brand equals style. I asked her why on earth would you even want a bag from a company that 90% of their product have the same brown design and gold LV logo all over it? Now if owning one of these real LV purses or bags is supposed to be a status symbol of arriving at a place in your life where you can afford one without care or concern but you’re not there yet… why buy a fake one? The sad fact is once you do grow up and eventually get to that place in your life where you can comfortably afford to buy a $1,200 to $1,600 purse. Would you actually buy one that any young 20 something year old girl could pick up off the street for under $100? You’d want that New New shit, that exclusive Lanvin shit. I went on to Neg her some. I told her that the bag is ok but truthfully its only her friends and girls in her age group would really like that knock off bag. But that when she grows up and knows who’s who and what’s what, she’ll look back at how silly it was to get a knock of exclusive thing that’s not really that exclusive to begin with. I knew what I just told her would sting a little since I wasn’t as impressed as she expected me to be. She did that little girl thing where she gets quiet for a moment but has to make a point. “Well at least I have a good story about how I got it” I finished my drink… we fucked.

References

I have spendaholic, crazy, now broke relatives who travelled with L.V. luggage so that brand has no allure for me. My first job out of college was at a high end luxury department store in NYC and the frequent m.o. of shoplifters there was to return their stolen wares claiming they were gifts and then get store credit, which they would then use at the L.V. boutique in the store’s ground floor. Also, Asian chicks carrying an L.V. bag is more Asian than wearing a Cheong-sam or a kimono in public. There was a New Yorker article earlier this year where the writer went on a cross Europe bus tour with Chinese tourists and the tourists were scrimping everywhere until they hit the Louis Vuitton counter in Paris and then it was like supermarket sweep. Girls who enjoy fashion generally prefer to spread the budget around to coats, tops and other clothing items and accessories. Expensive bags won’t make waists look smaller or lift the butt higher and nothing says from the burbs louder than an Old Navy style outfit with a logo bag.