Balenciaga has finally made a bag for the richies who want that fresh “just coming from Ikea”
look, but don’t want to taint their $3,300 calfskin leather jacket with
disgusting polyester straps! Balenciaga’s $2,145 (or 7 Klippan
loveseats in Ikea currency) Arena shopping tote looks like Ikea’s 99
cent FRAKTA bag. Well, if Ikea’s 99 cent FRAKTA bag married a rich
plastic surgeon, got its plastic skin replaced with fine leather skin,
started speaking in a snobby accent and held its nose up to the Swedish
meatballs it used to eat. Balenciaga’s Arena bag is basically a new
money FRAKTA bag. Today
asked Ikea for their thoughts on Balenciaga doing a rich bitch version
of their legendary cheap shopping bag, and they’re not mad at all.
“We are extremely flattered to seemingly be an
inspiration for the latest catwalk designs for Balenciaga. Our IKEA
Frakta tote is one of our most iconic products which are already owned
and loved by millions – now the many people truly can get the designer
look for less.”
Designers doing luxurious versions of cheap stuff isn’t new, and Balenciaga did it with a few of their bags this year.
You know those bags that the comforter or sheets come in at Bed Bath
& Beyond or Macy’s? My abuelita would use those bags as luggage.
Well, Balenciaga made a $3,670 version of that.
And you know those Mexican market bags you can use to carry groceries or laundry? Balenciaga did a $2,550 version of that.
I, for one, can’t wait until Balenciaga does a $4,500 version of the
wrinkled-up brown paper bag some of us are going to drink Thunderbird
vodka out of in between selling our ass under a bridge after spending
all our money on $2,145 bags and $400 juicers.
While writing a series of 10 articles highlighting operations of
foreign luxury brands in Korea, this reporter received a lot of feedback
over the past few weeks, not only from the global companies but also
from many readers of The Korea Times. Most of the feedback defended the
operations of the foreign firms and were not that favorable to the
articles.
But are these foreign luxury brands really
innocent enough to deserve this defense? For our readers' information,
this reporter felt an obligation to check whether they really are,
throughout writing the articles, and that is still the case.
After
criticizing Bulgari's stinginess in Korea, one of our readers wrote
that Korea does not require money from the Italian company, as the
country lacks "needy" children. He said, "All Korean kids have access to
good medical care, schools, good food and housing," which is actually
wrong, considering children with poor parents, without parents and
victims of abuse.
Moreover, Bulgari's donations even
benefit children in wealthier nations, such as Australia, Japan, the
United Kingdom and the United States. Also, given that Bulgari has yet
to list Korea among its charity beneficiaries on its official website, a
Bulgari spokeswoman was highly suspicious about prevarication when
asked whether the money contributed to Save the Children Fund is spent
on Korean children.
After pointing out the poor
customer relations of Hermes requiring a long lead time for buying its
bags, Michael Tonello, an author of "Bringing Home the Birkin," wrote
that there never was waiting list, because Hermes opened a lot of stores
in recent years and greatly increased production by hiring more
craftsmen for the new assembly line.
The author's
words which conflict with explanations of salesclerks and the experience
of many Korean consumers, however, foster doubts that there is a
pecking order in getting Hermes bags in Korea. Some suspect that
high-profile figures get them early, while ordinary people will have to
wait quite a long time. And still, Hermes remains reluctant to comment
on the issue
Some readers argued that the overall
series was biased, but this reporter tried to reflect explanations from
each brand, even after the articles were published. The accusations of
bias may have been a result from insufficient explanations from the
companies.
Comparing Korean firms to foreign
companies, some said that the former are also stingy in countries where
they are doing businesses. If they really are, this reporter truly hopes
journalists there, who are well-informed about laws and economic
situations in each country, highlight the matter.
Although
the series is over, this reporter and The Korea Times will keep
watching the management of foreign luxury brands, including those dealt
with in this series and those that have yet to be highlighted.
The
amendment of a law, which was expected to enforce limited companies to
unveil their financial statements, failed due to the removal from office
of former President Park Geun-hye and the resulting presidential
election. Thus, foreign luxury brands in Korea are highly likely to
continue their practice of stingy donations, inconsistent pricing
policies and the mistreatment of retailers and employees.
One
consolation is that this apparent attitude may face a backlash from
Koreans. Although some people still argue that Koreans will continue to
be obsessed with luxury, signs of changes are appearing slowly but
steadily.
As this reporter wrote in previous
articles, Louis Vuitton has begun to lose its luster in Korea, and duty
free operators did not participate in a bid for the luxury fashion brand
and accessories slots in the second terminal at Incheon International
Airport. Also, more Koreans are turning their eyes to rental shops,
rather than buying luxury items.
Medieval or modern, handbags reveal their bearers’ secrets more than they hide them. An Object Lesson.
A diamond-encrusted Birkin bag at an auction house in CaliforniaMario Anzuoni / Reuters
by Julie Schulte
I had started out thinking handbags and purses were the same thing.
I was a handbag newbie, an unpaid
writer, an impartial observer hired as a ghost memoirist for the CEO of a
luxury-handbag resale site. Having grown up in Los Angeles, I had a
cursory sense of the major brands: Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Hermès—but
like many of my bookish friends, I had dismissed such flashy handbags as
frivolous.
Working in the startup, I was surrounded by stacks of
bags, fielding questions from visitors who could not contain their awe. I
became intimately acquainted with their proper names (the Kelly), their
exorbitant price tags (last year, Christie’s HK sold a matte Himalayan crocodile-skin Birkin for $300,168), and the reverence they command.
I
narrated the CEO’s personal story in vignettes developed around her
most memorable bags. It was a tale of empowerment, a progressivist
narrative from imitation to high-end. These bags were the synecdoche of
the whole woman. They marked a leap in class, but also a spiritual
triumph—one that mystified me. Where did the mythos of this curious
handbag species begin? Where does it end?
The word “purse” comes from the Medieval Latin bursa.
In the Middle Ages, these leather bags were strung around the neck or
waist. They were utilitarian—and unisex. But the unisex sack of leather
did not evolve into the handbag until the 19th century. And the seasonal
flux of the fashion handbag didn’t arrive until even later. Even so,
their purpose has remained surprisingly steadfast: to expose their
wearer’s social station.
* * *
As someone who always carried a
backpack instead, I had started with the belief that there was no
supreme purse, no one bag to rule them all. But handbag aficionados would soon inform me I was wrong. There was an end-all-be-all bag: “Haven’t you heard, darling, of the Birkin?”
I
knew Jane Birkin from those black-and-white boudoir pictures with Serge
Gainsbourg, but what I didn’t realize was the bag made by Hermès in the
chanteuse’s honor was not something one just buys. This bag was about
competition. As a rule, even a wealthy woman cannot simply walk into a
boutique and leave with a Birkin. First she must be placed on an
indeterminable queue. The wait time is inconsistent and mysterious.
Status can reduce it, as can the illusion of status. Take for example Mr. Tonello,
the clever fashion buyer and Birkin reseller who would first pile up on
scarves and accessories and request a Birkin at the last minute. BRIC
nations can’t get their hands on enough bags, and in Hong Kong a luxury
bag is valuable enough to qualify its owner for a loan on the spot.
Handbags signified a privileged status long before Jane Birkin spilled her straw bag
on a flight next to Jean-Louis Dumas, the CEO of Hermès. In the late
19th century, women wore chatelaines—belts or clasps with attached
chains for storing household items. They marked a woman’s domestic
status, signaling who was the lady of the house and who was just a
servant. Precious metal chains signified a wealthy woman, and the
chatelaine with the most keys revealed who had total authority via
access.
As industrialization took hold, travel picked up too. The
train case emerged, a prototype for the modern handbag, and became an
outward sign of mobility. Handbags also started to signify the freedom
of a woman’s body. The layers of fussy underclothes and petticoats
common before the late 19th century also allowed stowage of carrying
bags underneath. But once women freed themselves from those garments,
exposing more of their physical form, they lost the space for pockets.
The external bag offered a practical solution.
And this new result
of fashion emancipation—called the reticule, a small bag on a
chain—could be marked as the beginning, too, of its homophone, ridicule. The external bag quickly became a constraint, a source of admonition. As Theresa Tidy, the ever-proper author of Eighteen Maxims of Neatness and Order, wrote in 1819, “Never
sally forth from your own room in the morning without that
old-fashioned article of dress—a pocket. Discard forever that modern
invention called a ridicule (properly reticule).”
The shame of handbags is not limited to the physical object imposing space.
The example shows a turning point,
when a bag began to signify not only status but also shame. Whatever men
carried was tucked away out of sight in their trousers; whatever women
carried was, by virtue of being exposed, flaunted.
Today still,
handbags impose conflicting rules of etiquette. Even the most compact
handbags seem to impose themselves in all sorts of social scenarios. A
quick Google search will yield conflicting results for the etiquette,
with people astounded how long they’ve been getting it wrong. What does
one do while sitting on a stool if the bar doesn’t have a hook to hang
it? When out to dinner is it preferable to hang your bag on the back of
the chair, set it on the table, on the seat behind your back, on the
lap, or on the floor to your right? Is it gauche to hand it to the
person sitting next to an open seat? At dinner parties, do you hang it
on a coat rack in the entryway, or house it on the bed with the coats,
or keep it on your person?
* * *
The shame of handbags is not limited to the physical object imposing space. It also produces metaphysical weight.
At
Yes Lady Finance, the mortgage broker that writes short-term loans
against Birkins, bankers lend up to half the value of the bag. The CEO,
Byron Yiu, told Reuters
that almost everyone who takes out a handbag loan will come back to
retrieve the bag. People imbue their bags with meaning, the loss of
which would be traumatic.
The same sentimentality that ensures Hong Kong ladies’ creditworthiness also underlies handbag hoarding. Women admit to the excessive number
they own and their attachment to each, often for the memories they
evoke. Some women I met confessed to loving some more than their own
children (not to mention others’ children).
Working
for the handbag start up, I learned that attachment was the greatest
challenge of luxury-handbag resale. Finding Birkin owners was easy. But
getting them to let go of their bags for resale was a complex endeavor
involving nothing short of emotional manipulation.
I met with a
handbag-inventory expert. She was a Birkin sleuth, scanning long client
lists, making inquiries, calculating a client’s likely emotional
resistance. She drove her Mercedes all over Southern California, hoping
to bag bags in wealthy women’s homes. I wondered if women resisted her
intrusion, or if they expected praise for their collections. And how did
she convince women who clearly did not need the money?As
it turned out, success came by negating any meaning the women had
ascribed to the bag. As soon as a woman became sentimental she would
interrupt them and declaim those old memories. “You will get a new one.
You will make new memories.” Selling a bag was a chance to erase the
past.
During the four months I wrote the memoir, I was physically
surrounded by luxury handbags. When women came to drop them off, I told
them about my project and asked if they had any bag stories they wanted
to share. Herschel backpack hanging from my desk chair, I was trusted as
an unthreatening outsider. Without fail, the regret they had initially
felt handing over their beloveds would clear in the act of sharing their
stories with me.
Unlike the Birkin sleuth, I indulged their
emotions. A Birkin priest hearing confessions of obsession, of greed, of
guilt—especially the old relationships and bad choices that had
facilitated the bag’s acquisition in the first place. Even the expensive
Birkin, with its implications of wealth and therefore choice, might
just as much imply imprisonment. Just as an onlooker might question a
young woman coupled to an old man, a Birkin on the arm can say, “the bag
chose me, not the other way around.”
Sitting with these women
behind a fortress of handbags, I synthesized the obvious truth of the
handbag: From chatelaine to reticule to designer bag, the handbag has
always offered both freedom and yoke. It encapsulates a fact about its
owner, and reveals that fact as much as, or more than, it conceals her
belongings.
Frauds. Fakes. Trickery. Deceit! Put on your CSI hat and investigate some of the most clever and costliest deceptions of our time in the captivating exhibition Treasures on Trial: The Art and Science of Detecting Fakes. Read the New York Times article on the exhibition, "Winterthur Exhibit Offers Insight Into Detecting Art Fraud."
Buy your tickets now
to view more than 40 forgeries and counterfeit objects of all types,
from art to wine to fashion. Learn the beguiling tales behind these
fakes— many of which have been at the center of major scandals and court
cases! See how science is deployed to reveal the truth behind these
clever shams, and how the experts answer the question, “Is it real or fake?” Plan you visit today! Discover those infamous objects whose stories of trickery captured sensational headlines around the world! Did you know:
A fake Babe Ruth baseball glove sold for $200,000
One of the oldest and most reputable art galleries in New York shut down after selling $60 million in forged paintings
A “super fake” Hermes Birkin bag made it all the way through Spa Hermes for cleaning before it was discovered to be a fraud
A fake 1787 Château Lafitte bottle of wine purportedly owned by Thomas Jefferson was sold to wine collector Bill Koch
Learn
tricks of the trade from master forgers, what gets faked and why, how
scientific methodology assists in spotting fakes, and more! Compare real
and fake works, and then ask yourself, “Do you see what you think you see?”
Interested in reserving a group tour? Please call 800.448.3883, e-mail, or visit the webpage for tickets
For updated information on Winterthur’s programs, events, and exhibitions, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @winterthurmuse and on SnapChat @winterthurmus.
For more information or for further assistance, please call 800.448.3883.
Treasures on Trial: The Art and Science of Detecting Fakes is included with admission. Members free.
