As Anya Hindmarch says status bags shout: ‘Look at me, I’m so wealthy’... - Is it terribly vulgar to flaunt designer labels?
- British designer Anya Hindmarch, dislikes designer handbags bought for status
- Liz Jones argues those who love designer accessories aren’t show-offs
- Rowan Pelling says wearing logo-heavy accessories obliterates your personality
Liz Jones (pictured) argues those who love designer accessories aren’t show-offs
NO
By Liz Jones
Oh, Anya Hindmarch, bag lady to the Duchess of Cambridge. How confident you must be to say you dislike designer handbags bought for status, which, you say, shout: ‘Look at me, I’m wearing this brand.’
How never in need of shoring up for a job interview or first date. Or compelled to self-gift to celebrate how far you’ve come.
It’s ironic, really, given your eponymous brand, to slate bags that have an obvious pedigree and price tag. Your comments could easily have come from a man: the bloke who drives a BMW, but asks the woman in his life why on earth she shops in SpaceNK and not just Boots.
My first obviously designer purchase was a ‘snowflake’ knit from Joseph Tricot on South Molton Street in London, bought in the late 1970s. Owning it meant the cripplingly shy teenager with acne from Essex might have a shot at belonging.
I quickly graduated to Mulberry. I could only afford a wallet, but as I studied the little logo depicting a tree heavy with fruit and possibilities, I knew I’d arrived. Designer accessories were my armour, a passport to a better life. I’m caressing the triangular Prada logo of my first designer bag now: a nylon rucksack. I handed over my card for it in Joseph, thinking: ‘Bet you regret turning me down as a Saturday girl now.’ The rucksack is still pristine 35 years on, by the way.
My favourite look-at-me branding is the double G of Gucci, the letters caught in an embrace. Remember its 2003 advert with a model’s pubic hair shaved into a ‘G’? The message was clear: if you wear Gucci, someone will love you.
Designer labels are shorthand, too. I remember going into the Celebrity Big Brother house and meeting my fellow housemates: a glamour model, a rapper and a bankrupt pop star. Each wore on their sleeve an embroidered badge depicting a cockerel behind the letter ‘M’: the logo of Moncler, the originally French brand that dressed Olympians. The logo proclaimed: I’ve worked hard. I can ski. I deserve to be here.
Those who love designer accessories aren’t show-offs, despite what Ms Hindmarch says. Those culprits are the women who turn up at a funeral in trainers, wielding a carrier bag. She might look askance at the lascivious red tongue of my Louboutins, but her lack of labels is shouting loud and clear: ‘I don’t make an effort for anyone. I only think of myself.’
There has been just one time I’ve been ashamed of my love of designer branding. In LA, waiting next to me at the luggage carousel was Natalie Portman. She scooped up a battered hessian rucksack. I let my vintage Vuitton tote go for one more spin, just so she didn’t realise it was mine.
Rowan Pelling (pictured) says wearing logo-heavy accessories obliterates your personality in service to rapacious marketing
YES
By Rowan Pelling
For a long time, it’s been my belief that flashy designer handbags act as a vanity tax on the rich and ostentatious.
If nothing else, they’re an excellent way of parting those with more cash than dash from the money in their Swiss bank accounts. Ditto clothes and sunglasses smothered in designer logos. You don’t need to be a Debrett’s etiquette coach to know labels are for wearing inside your garments.
So Anya Hindmarch was preaching to the converted when she said this week that she didn’t like ‘bags for status’ and preferred ‘things that are more discreet’.
Hindmarch is right. There is nothing more vulgar than using a designer handbag to flaunt your bank balance and fashion one-upmanship.
It’s understandable when teenagers become label-addicted (my 13-year-old is dressed top-to-toe in Nike), as sky-high insecurity comes with the turf. You dress for peer approval, not for yourself.
But by the time you hit adulthood, you should be buying gear because you like it; not walking around town like a smug, free billboard for Fashion Inc.
High-vis logos and cult handbags are all about coshing people over the head with your pointless privilege.
There’s a passage in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina where the heroine goes to a ball in a simple black velvet dress that outclasses all the more elaborate confections, ‘her charm lay precisely in the fact that her personality always stood out from her dress’.
The lesson holds true: when you swamp yourself in logo-heavy or cult-hit accessories, you obliterate your personality in service to rapacious marketing. Don’t get me wrong, I relish a beautiful handbag as much as the next woman, just not because it screams Hermes.
There’s something sensual in the velvety feel, fairy-fine stitching and intoxicating scent of top quality leather accessories. A top-dollar bag can be sculptural and practical at the same time. But that’s also why the best examples are well-loved and a bit worn: they’ve been used to transport a woman’s intimate possessions, not to trumpet her superiority.
The smartest bags are quite demure, like the subtle Grace Han Love Letter design (a snip at £1,595) the Duchess of Cambridge was seen holding this week. You only notice the hand of a master artisan when you look closely.
My own golden rule is that I never spend more than £30 on a bag, as it won’t make you look slimmer or younger. Also, expensive ones attract thieves. And you can’t fit a laptop and a novel in a Fendi Baguette.
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March 25, 2021 at 06:24AM
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Is it terribly vulgar to flaunt designer labels? - Daily Mail
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