So you’ve caused your significant other’s eyes to glaze over again after waxing lyrical about Rei Kawakubo’s collaboration with Louis Vuitton and the red jersey Bayswater Mulberry created for The Gap.
But the Louis had eight handles! It was made of monogrammed canvas! And the Bayswater was 95 British pounds, a revelation for fashionistas as your usual Bayswater costs about 500 pounds. Are these facts not fascinating? Not to him, apparently, so what’s a girl to do? She escapes online, of course, a haven for all those with niche interests. It’s here you can find like-minded souls who will not only accept but encourage your shallow obsessing.
The Purse Forum (forum.purseblog.com), for instance, is home to hundreds of women posting thousands of threads about every aspect of any bag created by any designer in great detail and at great length. It has sub forums dedicated to specific designers (take your pick of Chanel, Gucci, Fendi, Yves Saint Laurent et al) and here, women are cordial and friendly to each other, unlike on other forums and blogs. It seems unacceptable to bash other users, either overtly with “flaming” or covertly by, say, being unkind about their taste in fashion. There’s an air of “we’re all in the throes of mad obsession together”, so, it’s a bit like being in an online, fashion-crazed sorority.
It’s also quite an odd place to be. Women who acquire new bags coo over them on the forums as if they were newborn babies, likewise, other women congratulate them on having acquired a “little sister” for their Stam or their 2.55 or their Somerset. Bags are referred to as “she” (as in “Oh, she’ll be to die for with my new Marc Jacobs dress”) the way men call their cars, boats and bikes by girl’s names. New owners of a Prada or a Gucci all but compose love poetry to their new arm candy.
Once you get over the oddness of the level of these women’s fondness of handbags, the forums are useful, informative and addictive. Women post long lists of the designer bags in their wardrobes, apparently not to show off but instead to offer themselves up as experts on the styles and colours they own so they can give their opinions on whether this or that listing on Ebay is fab or faux.
Users are also honest and don’t waste words when it comes to criticising quality. They can, therefore, be a good source of reliable information from consumer to consumer as they’ve known and loved a product for months or years.
A new user can’t help but wonder how users afford their extravagant bags. What are the women behind the exotic monikers like? They must surely be wives of captains of industry, wags or heiresses with time and no talents. It’s nice that the modelling thread demonstrates otherwise: it’s a parade of users posing with their chosen bags in photographs. This is less narcissistic than it sounds, the main purpose is for would-be buyers to get an idea of a style they’ve seen on the internet or in stores and how it looks in action on an everyday woman, not an airbrushed supermodel with bronzed limbs languishing on a Lamborghini.
There are also threads of celebrities carrying designer bags, more often that not good examples of how NOT to do it. The scale becomes awkward if the very petite attempts to tote the very large (hello, Olsen twins); one ought not be able to climb into one’s bag, wouldn’t you say?
Disclosure – Claire Low is a member of The Purse Forum and posts under the name of ClaireL.