"Whenever something is exclusive, limited and luxurious, automatically consumer psychology wants it."

"It’s like handbags. Why is someone buying a Chanel versus that? It’s not because of the leathers. It’s to show that they have a Chanel and they can afford it."

Says Nabila Popal, a director of a market research firm, quoted in "Foldable Phones Are Unpopular. Why Is Apple Selling One? The company unveiled a new iPhone that costs $1,999. Here are the economics behind that price tag" (NYT gift link).

I think some high-priced things evoke laughter and You bought that?!

To get you started thinking of some of these things, I found "Wastes of Money Sold to You by Luxury Retailers" (Cheapism). I kind of want the hippopotamus sofa.

I saw a young woman with magenta hair bicycling in Madison, Wisconsin, a tote bag slung over one shoulder.

What was the slogan on the tote bag? "NOW MORE THAN EVER." What?! A Nixon fan?!!

What slogans of today will lose the association with a particular political cause or candidate and — half a century or so in the future — become usable for other causes by people who would hate that cause or candidate if they knew what the hell he/she/it was?

Yes We Can... Stronger Together... Change We Can Believe In... Make America Great Again...

There's background on Nixon's slogan in a WaPo article dated March 15, 2017: "Now, more than ever, ‘now more than ever’ needs to go/The phrase's resurgence is historically inappropriate":

Hasn't Canal Street always been funky?

Man takes a stroll through New York City..

This place is absolutely COOKED. 💀💀 pic.twitter.com/Lc9Yx5kPUd

— American AF 🇺🇸 (@iAnonPatriot) February 22, 2026

I watched that video, and yes, it looks awful, but has it "metastasized" and "gone insane"? It's Canal Street. The voiceover declares it's the "most expensive" part of New York and calls it "Tribeca" and "Soho." It's Canal Street, being Canal Street. 

I looked at those wares vendors had laid out all over the sidewalk, and I'd like to bring some lateral thinking to the problem. The product you see there is almost entirely women's handbags. It could become utterly uncool and dumb to carry a handbag. A handbag is literally a burden. It makes you vulnerable to theft. You don't need it. Designers whose clothes you may not be able to buy make a customer out of you by offering this carrier of their name, causing you to feel that you need it more than you do. Wake up to the post-handbag world and those guys hawking handbags will disappear. 

What, beyond your iPhone, do you need to carry these days? The closer you can get to nothing, the better you are. That's the idea to sell, but who is motivated to sell it? I know I'm being silly, at my age and my distance from New York, to try to influence the anti-handbag trend, which has to hinge on the pleasure and freedom of the consumer, not hatred of street vendors. These are guys making a living, and if your aim is to walk down an uncluttered, uncrowded street, reroute off Canal Street.

By the way, I used to live in NYC — from 1973 to 1984 — and 2 things about me back then: 1. I avoided Canal Street, unless I was swooping into that one place where I bought art supplies, and 2. I never carried a purse, I went out of my way to figure out how to carry everything in various pockets, I had a whole feminist/hippie conception of what I was doing, and I regarded women with purses as embarrassingly uncool. 

"As a lawyer, I feel most strongly about the least-discussed benefit: Eliminating bus fares can clear junk cases out of our court system..."

"... lowering the crushing caseloads that prevent our judges, prosecutors and public defenders from focusing their attention where it’s most needed. I was a public defender, and in one of my first cases I was asked to represent a woman who was not a robber or a drug dealer — she was someone who had failed to pay the fare on public transit. Precious resources had been spent arresting, processing, prosecuting and trying her, all for the loss of a few dollars. This is a daily feature of how we criminalize poverty in America...."

Writes Emily Galvin Almanza, in "Something Surprising Happens When Bus Rides Are Free" (NYT).

Speaking of poverty and traveling about, I see the NYT pushes this headline at me as the next thing I ought to click on and read: "Help! JetBlue Mangled My Vintage Louis Vuitton Bag and Won’t Pay Up."

"Men in power do not carry briefcases. Why should women?"

"Forgoing a bag simply telegraphs the impression that you have someone else to do the lifting for you. As Karla Welch, a stylist who worked with Ms. Harris at the beginning of her term, said: 'They all have bags. It’s just an aide carrying it.'"

Writes Vanessa Friedman, in "The Most Impactful Political Handbag Since Mrs. Thatcher’s/Sanae Takaichi, the new prime minister of Japan, makes a statement about work — with style" (NYT).

I jump to the middle of articles when I skim, and when I got to "a stylist who worked with Ms. Harris," I thought Who is Harris? 

Anyway, the new Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, a woman carries her own handbag, toting it at her side in the manner of Queen Elizabeth II and Margaret Thatcher. We're told: 

For Mrs. Thatcher, the handbag was a way of aligning herself with a respectable Everywoman accouterment.... Her bag was the kind of bag, British Vogue declared, carried by “a sensible, well-put-together person, reflective of an organized mind.”

The linked article sends us over to the OED to see this entry:

King meets President... and the ladies who carry pocketbooks meet the lady who carries only herself.

The wind kicks up as the King steps forward and all the many ladies' hats threaten to undercut the extreme dignity. The First Lady waits until she's duly shaken hands with the King before she reaches up — at 16:57 — to steady her headgear.

Stick around until 18:35, and you won't be sorry, unless you hate horses, white horses, arrayed in fairy-tale style.

It's the King's very best carriage, lavishly festooned with gold leaf, the very frippery Trump's haters deplore in the Oval Office. Their slogan plays in my head: No Kings!

At 23:13, I get the answer to the question that's been puzzling me: How do they keep the horses from shitting? (They don't.)

I had thought there was no music, that somehow silence was the soundscape for the event, but at 24:07 I see musicians and notice faint music. Perhaps there was music all along and a telephoto lens on the camera is creating the illusion that it is much closer than it seems. The faint music informs us of our great distance from these illustrious characters.

At 25:00, the music is (or seems) louder. It's "The Star-Spangled Banner." A song about fighting the British. 

"It was frankly, it was a nice looking purse."

Said Ed Martin, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, deflecting the question whether Kristi Noem's purse was stolen because she's Secretary of Homeland Security.

I'm reading "Man arrested in theft of DHS chief Kristi Noem's purse is in the U.S. illegally, official says/Noem’s bag was stolen by a masked man Sunday night while she was having dinner with her family in Washington, D.C." (NBC News).

So... he was in the country illegally. That fits the message conveniently. 

You know, I wouldn't carry $3,000 in my handbag, and I wouldn't put any handbag on the floor in a restaurant, and I especially wouldn't if it was a really nice looking handbag, but then I'm very security conscious. I don't expect others to be as security conscious as I am. But some people I would want to be very security conscious, even more than I am, a lot more than I am.

Secretary of Homeland Security.

"The intellectual property issue is another story we’ll get into, but this is basically the mob storming the castle saying, 'We’re here too, bitch, deal with it.'"

"You guys flaunted it and made it seem like we never get to be part of this, and now we get to be part of this fair and square."

Said Bethenny Frankel — a "Real Housewives" star — quoted in "Hermès tight-lipped on Wirkin bag, Walmart’s dupe of the Birkin/Walmart’s copy of the vastly more expensive and exclusive Birkin handbag has been praised on social media for breaking through the snobbery of high fashion" (London Times).

Hermès does not sell the Birkin online and until recently maintained a months-long waiting list, helping to protect its exclusivity. Hermès stores are only allowed to buy a select number of the bags bi-annually and the style of bags being delivered is rarely known before they arrive.... Hermès is yet to publicly comment on the Wirkin. Legal experts say the Birkin bag’s logo, its shape and design, are registered trademarks and therefore have legal protection....

Scuppered.

I'm trying to read this Guardian column, by Alexis Petridis, about the death of the actress/singer Jane Birkin, "Je T’Aime … Moi Non Plus was the succès de scandale of 1969 – but Jane Birkin’s music was far more than that/In her collaborations with Serge Gainsbourg, Birkin left a permanent mark on pop – and her underrated solo albums of dark, strange songs are ripe for rediscovery." 

It's rough going:

"When samples of the bag arrived a few months ago, they were so small... the team lost some of them."

"But at least one bag that survived will be on display later this month, affixed beneath its microscope, during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris. On June 19, it will be auctioned off online to a buyer who Mr. Wiesner hopes will not treat it with too much reverence. 'I almost hope somebody eats it,' he said."

From "What Is This? A Handbag for Ants? The Microscopic Handbag by MSCHF takes the tiny-purse trend to the extreme. To see it, you’ll need a microscope" (NYT)

Mr. Wiesner = Kevin Wiesner, the chief creative officer of MSCHF, which must stand for mischief, I'm just guessing.

Last February, the NYT had an article about another product of MSCHF's, The Big Red Boot, which where very big and bulbous boots: "Big Red Boots are REALLY not shaped like feet, but they are EXTREMELY shaped like boots."

As I've said many times on this blog, I love humor that plays with size, and my "big and small" tag is perhaps my favorite (along with "light and shade" and "seen and unseen").

"W. David Marx, the author of the book 'Status and Culture,' said that for luxury goods to function as status symbols, they need... to be used in a way that is not only to mark status."

"Someone carrying a beat-up Hermès bag suggests that they are not simply wearing it because of its label, according to Mr. Marx. It can give the impression, he wrote in an email, that 'I don’t even care if it gets beat up, because I’m not using this for status marking.' 'It’s just a bag,' he wrote. 'Who cares if it’s beat up?'"

From "Your Pristine Hermès Bag, to Some, Looks Tacky/As a growing resale market has made the brand’s handbags available to more people, some say the image that they convey depends on their condition" (NYT).

If you care, you're not doing it right. And if you don't care, you wouldn't even be trying. So, go ahead now....

I've got 9 selections from TikTok for you today. Let me know what you like best.

1. A baby camel.

2. What people in different parts of the world put on their oatmeal.

3. Dark colors are exactly right for this Victorian house.

4. The metal container, the mountain of sugar, and the cup of coffee with the spinning foam.

5. The Scotsman talks to the Englishman.

6. The denouncement of "performative work."

7. Maybe you don't know how to close a door.

8. Here's a good lesson in pausing a moment and not giving the obvious answer to a question.

9. Here's a good lesson in you are not alone.

"Chinese social media has been engrossed in an eye-popping debate over ads depicting alleged Western beauty ideals for Asian women, including the usage of makeup to create stereotypical 'slanted eyes.'"

According to "Mercedes-Benz removes ad with Chinese model over ‘slanted eye’ backlash" (NY Post). Photos over there show the makeup. The alleged "Western beauty ideals" are not to make Chinese models look less Chinese, but to accentuate the Chinese features. 

Mercedes-Benz has reportedly removed a recent video advertisement published on Chinese social network Weibo on Dec. 25, after the brand was criticized for doing up a model’s face to give her exaggerated sloping eyes. 

“Is there any beauty in this makeup?” one critic wrote. “It is not [open for] interpretation. No Chinese will think this kind of ‘beauty’ is attractive,” another added....

This is an interesting problem of subjectivity. Should each racial group be the judge of whether its own features should be minimized or exaggerated with makeup? 

Earlier this week, Gucci was similarly called out for a new handbag ad that uses “discriminatory” Chinese features. 

Communication-law professor Zhu Wei, of the state’s China University of Political Science and Law, said in a statement to the Global Times regarding Gucci’s ad, “This is extremely disrespectful to our culture. The disgust and revulsion expressed by the whole society toward this kind of insult should be heard.”

Here's the photograph he's denouncing (which looks beautiful to me (ugly handbag, though)):

"The strongest brand in the world is not Apple or Mercedes-Benz or Coca-Cola. The strongest brands are MIT, Oxford, and Stanford."

"Academics and administrators at the top universities have decided over the last 30 years that we’re no longer public servants; we’re luxury goods. We get a lot of ego gratification every time our deans stand up in front of the faculty and say, 'This year, we didn’t reject 85 percent of applicants; we rejected 87 percent!,' and there’s a huge round of applause. That is tantamount to the head of a homeless shelter bragging about turning away nine of ten people who showed up last night. We as academics and administrators have lost the script.... But the ultimate vehicle for a luxury item is to massively and almost artificially constrain supply. Birkin bags are $12,000 because they create the illusion of scarcity. I’ll have 170 kids in my brand-strategy class in the fall. We charge them $7,000 per student. That’s $1.2 million that we get for 12 nights of me in a classroom. $100,000 a night. The gross margins on that offering are somewhere between 92 and 96 points. There is no other product in the world that’s been able to sustain 90-plus points of margin for this long at this high of a price point. Ferrari can’t do it. Hermès can’t do it. Apple can’t do it. Apple’s gross margins are 38 points. Hermès and luxury goods are somewhere between 50 and 60 points. There has never been a luxury item that’s been able to garner the type of gross margins as university education."

That's from "The Coming Disruption Scott Galloway predicts a handful of elite cyborg universities will soon monopolize higher education" (New York Magazine).

And, yeah, I saw it: "garner."

"In ancient times purses were a male accessory because carrying money was a man’s job; for much of history, women didn’t need bags because they didn’t venture far from home...."

"It wasn’t until the Renaissance that women’s massive skirts allowed them to cache the stuff they needed in large pockets that dangled beneath their clothes.... Around the French Revolution, women’s silhouettes grew slimmer and bulging interior pockets were seen as an impediment to style. Instead, women were encouraged to carry their stuff in a small bag on a string called a 'reticule.'... The Rational Dress Society, founded in the 1890s, arose along with the burgeoning suffrage movement; its adherents argued that female independence could not be achieved in a tight-fitting, pocketless dress. True liberation required loose-fitting clothing that allowed freedom of movement — and pockets for keeping necessities close, including a revolver if necessary. But fashion won, and near the end of the 19th century, when it became permissible for women to travel alone, luggage designers like Louis Vuitton began peddling large handbags for women, positioning their wares as a signal of female independence.... But what’s independent about being so useful, so encumbered, as if every trip to the office were a trek on the Appalachian Trail?... The male purse went out of fashion more than 300 years ago, when tight breeches prompted the invention of the slender wallet.... Freedom from having to carry stuff is power...."

From "Men Know It’s Better to Carry Nothing" by Lisa Miller in The Cut.

I eschewed purse-carrying from the age of about 18 until... when was it? I insisted that clothes have pockets, only carried around a skinny wallet and keys, and considered it a feminist issue. Also a freedom issue. At some point, I decided it was simpler to carry a very small handbag, big enough for a wallet and keys and — ah, yes, the cell phone. It was the cell phone that made me want to get my carry-ables out of my clothing and separately compartmentalized.

These women who carry about large, heavy bags (discussed at some length in the linked article) — I have never understood how they could stand being weighed down like that. The article goes on at some length about the female obligation to take care of everything, such as wiping up spills, as if women are overly responsible, while men skate free.

I remember a particular handbag that I got when I was about 11. It was suede and a lovely shade of orange. I'd love to have it now. But I had no idea what to put in it. I asked my older sister and she went about finding things to fill up the empty space. I remember her getting the idea to throw in a few hair curlers. That seems so absurd to me now.

Faye Dunaway in a Gucci ad might amuse you.

It made me laugh because of the surreal lolling about within extreme wealth and Dunaway's gently emerging grandmotherliness (which comes to full bloom when she goes out to play tennis). It's an effective ad (in my view) because it caused me to look up the price of the handbag and to be stunned at the lowness of the price (when it was about $2,300).

"It was a tribute to the idea of East Coast preppy culture, a love note to Salinger and Cheever, to the Kennedys, and to the early ’60s..."

"[Kate Spade] ads had the confidence and charm of a Wes Anderson film, a few years before Rushmore made his style instantly recognizable. They’d taken a love of WASP-y Americana and merged it with a winking downtown irony, in a formula that brands like J.Crew and Tory Burch would later emulate with great success. In retrospect, it’s hard to appreciate how cool those simple handbags were.... Everything about that year in my life felt vivid, even though I only worked in retail and went to college. I lived a few blocks north of the store, in an apartment with two rooms and no bathroom sink. Outside of the shop, life might have been chaotic, but inside, everything was calm and under control. I loved going to work and was never bored, even when it was just me and Julia, my store manager, listening to Joni Mitchell and eating peppermints while we waited for customers...."

From "Remembering the Magic of Kate Spade" by Stella Bugbee (New York Magazine).

Reading that made me think and the first thing that I saw was the sun through yellow curtains and a rainbow on the wall/Blue, red, green and gold to welcome you, crimson crystal beads to beckon....

And I once lived in a NYC apartment that had no bathroom sink. (There was a big, claw-footed bathtub, and leaning over it to wash hands or brush teeth became the norm. And I must have put in my contact lenses there. That's the hardest thing to picture. I guess I put the rubber plug in the drain and went for it.)

Such happy pretty things, stamped with a name now linked to suicide.

Here's the most cheerful of my Kate Spade bags...



"The designer Kate Spade, who created an accessories empire and whose handbags became a status symbol and a token of sophisticated adulthood for American women, was found dead on Tuesday. One of the first of a powerful wave of American female designers in the 1990s, Ms. Spade built a brand on the appeal of clothes and accessories that made women smile. Her cheerful lack of restraint and bright prints struck a chord with her consumers, many of them cosmopolitan women in the early stages of their careers. She embodied her own aesthetic, with her proto-1960s bouffant, nerd glasses and playful grin....." (NYT)

How you got into a Chanel bag I'll never know.

"I was riding in an Escalade en route to the 'Sex and the City' movie premiere in Midtown with a Bravo camera crew in tow. When the SUV door opened, I stepped onto the pink carpet in my Allison Parris dress and Chanel bag. I felt like a star. I felt beautiful. I felt proud. I was rubbing shoulders with celebs and the goddess herself: Carrie Bradshaw, a k a Sarah Jessica Parker. Since moving to New York City four years earlier, I’d established myself with my own dating column and graced the cover of Wired magazine...."

From "Dating columnist reveals how ‘Sex and the City’ ruined her life" about Julia Allison, who I would think should have to write better than that to be a big-shot columnist.

I was considered by many to be Carrie Bradshaw 2.0. And I was happy to be given that identity for a while, but it was all a lie. 

Oh, come on. Carrie Bradshaw is and always was a fictional character. Who goes about in the real world as the double of a fictional character without knowing from Day 1 that it's a lie? I can't believe I'm supposed to read how she believed she embodied a fiction and took some time to discover that it was a lie. I could just as well read a column by a 12-year-old who used to believe she really was a magical princess but finally figured out it wasn't true and — don't tell me let me guess — that real life actually is more satisfying than the fiction. Let me glance forward into this mess:

I lived on food bought for me on dates... Different men I dated gave me YSL shoes and status purses... I also subscribed to Carrie’s ethos when it came to men. There was no such thing as a bad date — only a good date or a good brunch story....

In 2008, my two best girlfriends and I... were all invited by a 40-something billionaire to his Miami mansion; he even sent his private jet for us. It was just him, the three of us and his butler and chef. I don’t think this man was used to being told no, and he started chasing me around his mansion. I finally had to lock myself in the bathroom. The worst part: He sent us back on JetBlue.

Right. Flying cheap is worse that being the victim of attempted rape. What a wit you are! Bleh.

I got to that article via Instapundit who seems to accept Allison's blaming "Sex and the City" for the fact that Allison's career of being a Carrie type eventually got played out. It seems to me that "Sex and the City" was a TV show. It mixed fantasy female fun with some serious material about finding love, and viewers with half a brain knew what we were looking at. Who goes out and tries to be one of the characters on a TV show then blames the show for how it didn't totally work? Allison got plenty of attention, amusement, and material gain working this career she chose. I don't for one minute believe she was tricked by the show. I think she exploited it. And it would be silly to empathize with her now that she has her own career reasons to reinvent herself. She's once again trying to use our interest in the excellent TV show to leverage her career.

At the Demand-Superior-Walls Café...

... you can talk about whatever you want. These walls have ears. No one says that anymore. All the trite phrases that have gone away. Occasionally you notice one. Remember when people said Let's run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes?

Anyway, that image is a screenshot from Meade's computer the other day. I don't know if some algorithm picked up his interest in Trump's wall or what. It was last Tuesday, the day of the Fat Tuesday Café — pictured in the screen grab. You may remember that, in the comments, FIDO said:

I hadn't noticed it before, but the blog has an Ashley Madison ad on it. It is that google has determined that I am a pig, a random placement, or has Ms. Althouse become open minded on infidelity?

And I said:

Yeah, it's a sophisticated algorithm. If you're getting Ashley Madison ads, it says something about what Google knows about you.

Me, I'm getting an ad for a $1900 Chloe handbag.

And Meade said:

The only ad I'm seeing now is for something called "Superior Walls." No, I'm not a white supremacist. Yes, I want Trump to build the wall. Waiting for my head to spin.

You may remember that Trump said "That wall will go up so fast, your head will spin."

Talk about anything though. This is a café.

That means I need to add a reminder to use the Althouse Portal to Amazon. I couldn't find the $1900 Chloe handbag there. But you can buy the movie "The Wall" ("A deadly psychological thriller that follows two soldiers pinned down by an Iraqi sniper, with nothing but a crumbling wall between them"), Wall Control 30-P-3232GV Galvanized Steel Pegboard Pack, an iRobot Virtual Wall Barrier (to control your Roomba), and Pink Floyd's "The Wall."