Rent an Expensive Handbag (very mild RO)

The BBQ Pit
1

Linky-poo

From the ad
“show off, send back”.

This ad was on my Yahoo homepage. I glanced at it and thought, “this can’t mean what it looks like it means, can it”? I clicked on the ad, and sure enough, they’re encouraging people to rent a fancy brand name purse, such as Gucci, Coach, and Louis Vuitton, so that they can “show off” (show off what? their gullibility and screwed up set of values?).

I carry a handbag under mild protest, they’re a PITA as far as I’m concerned, always falling off your shoulder, when you as much as reach for your cell phone, blah de blah. And even though I’m a girlie girl and love pretty things (which imNSho, many of these are not), I really can’t see paying a month’s rent (or more) for a purse.

But out of further curiosity, and thinking “sheesh, how much can these bags cost to buy if one has to rent them in order to be able to even have the illusion of being shallow and empty-minded enough to place that much stock in material things?” I looked up the purchase price of a few of these designer bags.

According to the website, they rent for (using the Gucci as an example) from approximately $10-70 a week to about 300+ a month depending upon the bag and brand. I looked up the purchase prices too. They’re about $500 to 3000+ to purchase.

So, you can pay $300 bucks a month for the privilege of pretending you are “rich”, or you can hmmmm…I dunno, SAVE that $300 bucks a month until you have enough to purchase one?

Wow, that’s sad that we’ve got enough of a market for status symbol addiction that there are places to rent a pretense of “wealth”. (imho, true wealth is tempered with wisdom).

Thanks “Friends” for fostering the idea that everyone can live a life of luxury with little to no visible means of support.

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:shrug: I don’t know why my wife needs 100+ pairs of shoes. I would have looked at the ad and figured it was another one of those woman things.

3

Alternatively, if your wife could rent her shoes, there wouldn’t be 100 pairs clogging up your closets.

I personally probably couldn’t be bothered to use bagborroworsteal, but it occurs to me that it may be less about the ‘pretense of wealth’ than about spending $100 to *use * a trendy thing, rather than spending $2000 to *own * a trendy thing.

Now, if one would like to own a Kelly bag, it makes a hella lot more sense to save up and buy a Kelly bag. You’ll use it forever. But this season’s Luella loses it’s shine next season. Why buy?

4

I am decidely on the fence with this one.

One side makes me weep for humanity that anyone would ever spend a couple hundred ( to thousands) on a purse. It makes no sense to me.
The other side makes me wish I had come up with the idea of renting purses out to those desperate to fit in with the herd.

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Oh, I’m not complaining. That was Day 1 of husband training.

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Part of me weeps for humanity whenever I’m presented with the “people who spend hundreds on a purse are shallow bovines” argument.

After all, why would anyone ever want a Rembrandt when the world is full of perfectly good Elvis on velvet?

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Well, that’s it, right there: There are only a relative few Rembrandts extant, while the world is stuffed to the rafters with kitschy black velvet paintings. How many of these purses and handbags are there out there? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? I don’t care how good their workmanship is – they’re not in a limited supply like a Rembrandt would be.

Sorry – Art Major. I get worked up about these things.

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Do supply and demand really factor in so much? My sister has painted far fewer pictures than Rembrandt, does that make her paintings worth more?

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I’m certainly no expert, but it seems to me that the price would be some combination of talent, fame, and supply, plus other, less important factors.

I could maybe understand these bags costing so much if they were one-of-a-kind like the artwork, but they’re not. If you’re going to compare purses to great art (I wouldn’t, but whatever), then I think they would be less like original Rembrandts and more like prints of his work, which would make it difficult to justify the outrageous prices they command, IMHO.

10

Maybe it’s worse than shallowness. Take an abnormal psych class or two, one which covers “fads, fashions, and manias”, or read some chapters from MacKay. There is a high level of irrationality in fad clothing items (or fad anything) which can easily, according to the ab psych courses I took, border on mild insanity.

The art world is no stranger to the impact of fads and manias. I personally find Rembrandt to be dark and of average quality among his peers.

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Geez people. Dopers can spend oodles of money on electronic doodabs and chainmail shirts and no one thinks it’s odd, but the minute anyone mentions a handbag over five bucks they get branded with “shallowness” and “mild insanity.”

I am reminded how divorced this place is from the real world sometimes.

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The real world would be worth much more if it were bedizened with Gucci logos.

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She’s okay on the supply side. One suspects that the demand may not yet be quite what’s required.

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Well congratulations. Having taken an abnormal psych class or two, clearly you win. Perhaps now you can move on to art history? I’ll concede being more of a Vermeer girl myself.

I like nice handbags. I also prefer good vodka. No one ever tells me I’m crazy for spending more than the average amount of money on the latter, but people are constantly looking at me askance for the former.

And they are, of course, welcome to their opinions. But I find that the sort of people who throw hissy fits over how shallow fashion is are mostly just insecure about their appearance and/or their means, and have convinced themselves that it’s not that they’re incompetent at or making themselves presentable, or unable to afford the pretty things they covet, it’s just that they’re too deep to care.

15

Eh…people are free to spend redonkulous amounts of money on whatever they wish, I’m free to think it’s redonkulous, and they’re free not to give a rat’s ass about my opinion (if I offer it, which I probably won’t, unless they ask, which for some reason they occasionally do).

Given the tendency of a couple of my ex-girlfriends to buy $200 pairs of shoes to wear once and throw in the closet, I’d have to say that fashion accessory rentals are a step in the right direction.

16

Oh, great. Now I’m itching for a chainmail shirt replete with Gucci logos. That would be precious!

Getting back to the handbags, let’s assume that a style-line starts from one model, hand-crafted by a master bagmaker. Everything that comes after that are copies, nothing more. I can understand that the first bag would be worth a large sum of money; the copies, not so much. No more than a poster of a Rembrandt would approach the value of the real thing, not even if it was printed on really glossy stock, using top-of-the-line inks.

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This was on one of those talk shows. The point of the rental was the women wanted different purses and they sent back the old one in a month. They didn’t then have to buy 12 purses a year. The other reason was they needed something really nice for an event.

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Amen.

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DianaG and HazelNutCoffee, I so totally agree with you.

What also gets under my skin is the “I’m so much better/more highly evolved than you” attitude that seems to come with it.

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I guess I just don’t get the brand name appeal. I love purses, even though I really hate carrying one. I have far more than I need, including swanky clutches for formal events I never go to anymore. I just can’t tell the difference between a Coach bag and one from Kohls or Target. I really don’t look closely at another person’s bag or shoes.

I guess I am just not “with it”. At 47 it’s probably too late for me.