Okay, so you wanna talk wealth and luxury and all that? Let's.

A Canadian-born British biographer, financier, and former newspaper magnate by the name of Conrad Black is currently embroiled in some legal difficulties in Chicago. He is married to a British-Canadian journalist and writer by the name of Barbara Amiel, and the couple's dual preference for the finest of the finer things in life has become almost legendary in the record-books of modern splurging. Check it: Three opulent mansions and a Park Avenue condo, a private jet and a Rolls-Royce, and then Amiel’s so-called  “environmental chamber,” containing her dozen crocodile-skin Hermès Birkin handbags, as well as more than 30 Renaud Pellegrino evening bags--the handles of which are encased in jewels--and more than 100 pairs of Manolo Blahnik shoes. As one article points out, the dozen bags all sit on single shelf in one of her closets, and are worth in excess of £100,000 British Pounds, which is equal to over $200,000 (US). And let me just add that, as for her education, she holds an Honors degree in Philosophy and English as well. Irrelevant? I do not think so, and I'll tell you how, a little later...

But anyway, a very funny and very whiney British newspaper editorial from 2004 asks the question, "Is there anything sadder than a trophy handbag?" But I believe the full question goes: "Is there anything sadder than a trophy handbag on a shelf next to eleven other identical ones that hasn’t been adequately dusted by the butler that afternoon?" It reminds me of a fine proverb (from some book) that says: It is as easy to keep the rich from bragging, as it is to keep the poor from complaining. I mean, you can buy a car to impress chicks, OR, you can get a hatchback from 30 years ago and tell everyone you talk to that a car's only purpose "is to get from point A to Point B"--in which case Point A is your job at the Arby's Drive-Thru, and Point B is the basement of your parents' house, where you have a every episode of "Pimp My Ride" saved on DVD. (Ahem.)

So, as I was saying... Le bag Birkin also happens to be the same one that Martha Stewart, that Super-Diva of "the Domestic Arts," carried to federal court throughout her highly publicized trial back in 2004. I wonder if that made her jail sentence shorter than it otherwise would have been, y'know? If it were the fashion police that were in charge of this society of ours, then yeah, she still may have been taken in--but only to be given like a Citizen of the Year Award! How truly bad-ass does a woman have to be to love cooking, cleaning, and craftmaking, AND to carry couture accoutrements??? Being an ex-con will not tarnish her image, nor undermine her ability to dust capers. You hear that?? Consider yourself ““PWNED””, lazy women!!! >:-P ugh

Well anyway. The Brooklyn-based hip-hop superstar Jay-Z, president and CEO of both Def Jam and Roc-A-Fella Records, has referenced the Birkin bag in two of his duets with R&B megastar Beyoncé, as well as on at least one of his own tracks. Talk about status--in another update, I referred to dresses that cost as much as a new car...but a handbag that costs as much as a new SUV?? You have to see it to believe it--or feel it to believe it. Apparently the bag must be proportinately as heavy as an SUV, considering that the woman who it was named for, ended up getting tendonitis from years of carrying it!

One authoritative handbag website calls the bag “The No. 1 'it bag' of all time," and goes on to say, "This is the holy grail of all handbags. Its iconic status means that the waiting list for this bag is currently so long that it has been closed. So no need to beat yourself up about the fact that you can't afford one because you couldn't get one anyway. If you are ever lucky enough to become a member of the Birkin club, you'll be safe in the knowledge that this bag will never date and will still look cool in 40 years' time..." Well, it's all a matter of taste really, isn't it? Well, when it comes to that price range, no. But feel free to draw your own conclusions, babe...
 
But as the malcontent British editorialist said of this phenomenon of supreme exclusivity: “The trophy bag effect has spread its grasping tendrils throughout the competitive world of wrist candy. Terminally insecure fashionistas are urged to sign up to a new rental service [so] that they never suffer the social stigma of being seen with the same bag twice. The titles that the website allots to its three grades of membership, namely trendsetter, princess, or diva - tell you everything you need to know about the lofty ambitions of its clientele.”

Lofty indeed! But then again, if the guys you’re dating are type to actually criticize you for showing up with same bag twice…or uhh, if they’re the kind who even notice your bag at ALL, then you probably already know that you’re just trying to impress a male friend of yours, and not a potential BOYfriend… Men are shallow when considering a woman's looks; but considering the consistency of a woman's clothes? I've never known a guy who would be annoyed about dating a hot girl who insists on wearing the same hot-looking dress every time they're together... but he may have to be especially ready to get into fights and stare down a never ending series of ogling strangers both male and female, young and old.

But to continue this point, here's a quote that's along the lines of what I'm sayin': “Only men who are not interested in women are interested in women's clothes. Men who like women never notice what they wear.” -Anatole France, turn-of-the-last-century French writer. But that actually overlooks something else: the actual reason that most women get dressed in the first place, because, as the 1930's Italian designer Elsa Schiaparelli rightly said, "Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women." But if it's true that men who take note of what a woman wears are not actually interested in women, then does that mean that all men are just purely fetishists? If that's not the case, then so much for straight designers, right...? I mean, what, like half the male designers in the industry have wives (usually former models, obviously). And if Anatole France is right, then we also say so much for all those websites out there that are aimed at guys who like seeing girls in a some particular type of clothing... Who "doesn't notice" what they're wearing now, tough guy?? Ah, ha....whateva.

But as for the relationship between price and originality--that is, if we are going to consider fashion part of an individual's identity (DUH)--there is a valid point to be raised. As Tori Amos, the piano-playing American songstress, said in an interview, “I never bargain-buy shoes or bags…[but] I can't get into the sheep mentality of fashion. If everyone is being seen with an 'It' bag, it's not the 'It' bag for me. I prefer to own a classic or something really new." That is one brave declaration of stylistic independence! She has also said something that those who object to this update's focus on a certain controversial fabric might find interesting, namely this: "Certain things do appeal to me more than other things. I'm obsessed with crocodiles and getting eaten by one... When I hear that someone's been eaten by a crocodile...I start salivating. I'm fascinated by it. If I had to get tortured by a human being or eaten by a crocodile, I'd take the crocodile any day of the week. The reason is that it's not personal. You were lunch."

According to some encyclopedia of dreamy-time symbolism, if someone dreams about crocodiles, but in positive terms, i.e. not being afraid of them, it can "represent your potential and your power to to seize luck when it comes along, or, if shown in a negative sense, i.e. being eaten by them, it can "represent hazards lying beneath the surface of a seemingly harmless situation." Well, this poses two very different fates for an individual to have--namely, as to what would be a turn of good luck, and what would be a turn of bad luck. So, let's consider two opposing possibilities: Being able to consume crocodile? Lucky. Being consumed by a crocodile? Not so lucky.

But, speaking of Lucky, the shopping magazine that guides women to the "it" looks of the moment, the debate over what's "in style" and what's cool is an ongoing one, and because of the vast multiplicity of designers and the rapidly overturning seasons from to the next (and how the seasons overlap)--because of all of that, fashion has been splintered into enough subcategories that I would say, even knowing how completely insane it will sounds, that every look is in. Taste is a matter of taste! (--certainly not my most groundbreaking insight, but one that's as rarely expressed as it is). Right now, in Spring/Summer 2007, a big look is supposed to be a sort of "Space Age" style, with lots of silver shirts and jackets, and gold or silver pants (for guys or girls!), and black plastic or metallic dresses and skirts... Now, I am outside all the time, all over the place, and I wanna see some outerspace stylatronic robo-chicks!! Where. Are. They?!?? :::le sigh::::::

As Yves Saint Laurent said, "Fashion fades, style is eternal." and that "Fashion is futile; style is not." In a sense, you could say that Fashion is the enemy of Style as such. I have taken an insight from 19th-century French poet Charles Baudelaire's essay about the Modern Man, and switched the gender to apply it to the Modern Woman instead, and here I quote it: "Certainly that woman, such as I have described her, that loner who is gifted with an active imagination, traversing forever the vast desert of women's fashion, has a loftier aim than that of a simple idler, an aim more general than the passing pleasure of circumstance. She is looking for what one might be allowed to call modernity; for no better word presents itself to express the idea in question. What concerns her is to release the poetry of fashion from its historical trappings, to draw the eternal out of the transient." (From his essay entitled "Modernity," in The Painter of Modern Life.) Once again, fashion fades, style is eternal.

Sssso YEAH! That’s something for all of you ladies keep in mind—namely, when you go and spend your hard-earned money for the most UNIQUE Birkin you can find, that it will be your own personal "it" bag, an instant classic and really new!--and for the fiery-haired and fiery-hearted Tori Amos herself, I would suggest this particular model:

And as for the rest-a y'all, ya just gotta get on that waiting list and hold your breath until they call your number to the front of the line...in this couture delicatessen of dreams, for a nice cut of honey-glazed crocodile, or if you're just thinkin' about what's inside (i.e. the lining), then you'll be having a Chevre goat-leather sandwich (hey, you asked for it!). But if you don't wanna get it with your own money, then you can go to your parents or "cawll on ya maaaaaan!!!!" and churn out some good ol'-fashion fake-ass tears. And yes, those tears, apropos of the desideratum at hand (or that you wish to be at your hand), happen to be known as crocodile tears, a phrase which goes as far back as the 1400s, when it was believed that crocodiles actually wept as they devoured their prey--which, of course, is not the case. Even the most minimally zoologically inclined knows that all reptilian species are all quite literally cold-blooded (which includes the extremely well-contoured golden creature I showed at the beginning, and in that case, it is most certainly true that the female of the species is much deadlier than the male...).

Barbara Amiel, the turbo-shopaholic with the $200 Grand in Birkins, said of herself in a 2002 Vogue interview: "I have an extravagance that knows no bounds.” And that same article went on to point out that "She pays for her ready-to-wear. Her husband pays for her couture." And a former associate (quoted in another article) said that "Their marriage detonated a frantic quest to amass luxury goods that extended beyond reason, even beyond compulsion." Well, the word "extravagant" is from the Latin "extravagari," which means "to wander outside or beyond"--so, even in linguistic terms, she goes pretty damn far, to say the least. But, again, just how DOES a woman make that happen? Is it...by playing a strong sympathy card? Youuuuu got it! :-D Look no further than right here--> “Amiel attributes her need for all this to a slight she suffered as a penniless teenager, when the mother of the boy she was dating made fun of her outfit. ‘I sort of never forgot it. And now I have an extravagance that knows no bounds.’ That quote has been widely repeated, but friends say it is nothing more than endearing self satire.”

Shakespeare showed Othello going into a rage, in which the "Moor of Venice" referred to his former beloved, Desdemona, and went:

O devil, devil!
If that the earth could teem with woman's tears,
Each drop she falls would prove a crocodile.
Out of my sight!  (IV.i.265)

But before you jump to any hasty conclusions--since I brought up that classic tale of jealousy and imagined infidelity--let me just point out that the Canadian-British couple's trial is just about their spending, not about any sort of divorce or separation, as you may have suspected! And if that's where you suspicions were leaning, then you had better wisen up and actually watch the tabloid TV show "Celebrity Justice" instead of wasting another minute reading those criminology textbook--that is, if you were actually hoping to become a prosecutor, or a good one, anyway, who doth not assume too much and isn't misled so easily...

"Tears are the strength of women," said Saint Evremond.
And an Italian proverb goes:
A woman's tears are fountains of maliciousness.
(Le lacrime delle donne sono fontane di malizia.)
Or let's reach even farther back through Italian history to Ancient Rome itself! This is the 1st-century BC writer Publilius Syrus, most known as a writer of maxims, or fundamental rules or principles, one of which was that:
"Women learn to weep in order to deceive" -from his Sententiae, or Sentences.

To cry about the financial difficulties and social adversity of one’s past in a ploy, plea, or play to convince others of your gloriously humble background is by now a commonplace maneuver in the world of politics, and has come to be known by the name of “reverse snobbery.” It’s the ol’ “My father was a coal miner and look at how far I’ve gotten myself!” when the truth is that the guy’s father has once put some charcoals on their gold-plated barbecue grill, and the guy himself has had one of the easiest lives in the world, even by American standards—which is obviously saying a lot. But one must be intelligent to successfully pull this off. So, as for how a woman may elicit such sympathy from a man in a position of such power? To the power where he is elicited to do something illllicit? (Couldn't resist.) Huh—now that is where a university degree in Philosophy and English really comes in handy: I am not saying that a young woman cannot become a mistress (not master) of psychological manipulation unless she obtains that type of, well, training in it at that level, but rather that studying Plato, Hobbes, and Machiavelli, and such brilliant Shakespearen women as Katherine from Taming of the Shrew, Rosalind from As You Like It, and of course, Lady Macbeth, will you not only be a more clever, but also a more cool-headed and more "practiced at the art of deception," as the song goes--and show that you can always get what you want.

To be a woman who is naturally crafty (and "gets around") is one thing; to have received a formal education in it...well, that...that is something else. I cannot even imagine how unbelievably f^cking dangerous a woman could become if she were to read and internalize even just 50 or so of Machiavelli's devious, power-hungry "rules." And you don’t even need to change the gender of most of those quotations, becomes the author is talking about how one man defeat all the other men who get in his way, while a woman, I imagine, would rather like to do just that, as well. Thus, the wisdom can be acquired not just by an aspiring prince, but by a true Machiavellian Princess! (And then you can become a “Diva,” all in good time). But from a guy's point of view? That sh^t is SCARY!!!

We all have some ability to smoothly deceive, but truly Machiavellian levels of duplicity and willful deception are only known by extremely few members of either sex—and practiced by even fewer. So as it turns out, the only reason there is more good than evil in the world is probably just nothing more than sheer laziness.

But anyway, yes, as another Latin proverb says:
Weeping hath a voice, and tears are at times as eloquent as words.

But what about a woman's cosmetic situation, this time referring to the area sous ses sourcils en peau de crocodile de Dior, that is, under her Dior crocodile-skin eyebrows? (LOL.) Baudelaire wrote another short essay entitled "In Praise of Make-Up" (yes, really), and in regarding—which is literally looking at (from the French regarder)—the mascara and blush of a woman, Monsieur Baudelaire considered how statuesque they make a woman appear, and he said:  “As for the artificial black which encircles the eye and the red which marks the higher part of the cheek, although their usage is derived from the same principle, that is, the need to transcend their nature, the result achieved satisfies a completely opposite need. The red and black represent life, a supernatural and excessive life; this black edge gives the woman a deeper and more unusual gaze, gives the eye an appearance more like a window opened out to eternity; the red, which enflames the cheekbones, increases the clearness of the pupil further, and adds to a beautiful female face the mysteriousness of a priestess.” --and this was written in 1863!

And now, Marilyn Monroe lends this insight of pure brilliance:
"The women have, at their disposal, two terrible weapons: make-up and tears. Fortunately for the men, they cannot be useful at the same time."

But then, Napoleon the First is also quoted as saying, very similarly: "The two most powerful forces that a woman can use against men are make up and tears—and men must be thankful to God that she cannot use them both at the same time." So who said it first? Which one is the real one? This is a matter of online authenticity, of course, and I'll say more about that--and in a much pricier sense--in just a bit. But first, a few related points--here:

"Men are like mascara, they run at the slightest display of emotion." -Kabir Bedi, Indian film actress. Now this one becomes an interesting matter of translation; I am willing to bet that the original sense of "run" means both "to escape" AND "to surrender." Don't you think...?

English superstar Victoria Beckham recently said of the 2007 Pride of Brain Awards:
"The people who get these awards are just amazing. It's so emotional I was thinking about wearing waterproof mascara.” Now did I mention that SHE'S been spotted carrying one of the Hermès handbags? Or probably like ten different ones over the past few years, I would imagine....

…but HEY, if you really want one, you just use your guy's money without telling him!!!! (but uhh, only at your own risk, mind you; I mean, WuZzuP, jOiNt CReDiT ACCoUnT! :-o oh sh^t!!! what were you thinking??!?). Just make sure that you get one that not every OTHER actress/model/über-celebutante (my coinage!) has on their professionally spa-treated forearm... There is one particular eBay seller who carries the bags, and he or she identifies him- or herself as a fashion "expert." And NO, it's not me. While I have sold some completely random stuff on eBay, that is not me... No, it's not--I'm not even an 'expert' about fashion, per se...I'm just an enthusiast, a fanatical enthusiast. The kind who'll say something like -

But the important thing to keep in mind is that the Wikipedia article about the bag says that the ones that are sold online are not likely to authenetic...but then again that's Wikipedia...but then again that's eBay...but then again that's corporate marketing's use of consumer psychology...but then again this is just the Internet and who the hell am I? I sure as hell ain't no devil's advocate, that's for sure). Okay, yeah, so ya got all that? Good. Then maybe soon we can REALLY call you Mrs. Croco-dile-dile-dile, and then you can go fill that bag with anything—maybe three or four small luxury purses, or maybe even, I dunno, a Smurfette Pez dispenser? (NONE of which were individually available at the time of this update—now THAT’S exclusivity, for REAL!). After all, as you might already know, eBay was actually started for trading Pez dispensers. Yes, really.

“We spend our lives
doing work we don’t enjoy,
to buy things we don’t need,
to impress people we don’t like.”
—the wonders of a free market,
Huzzah!

It's an old joke that what someone else calls their "stuff," you call "junk," and that what you call your "stuff," they call "junk".... But in some cases, it can be quite the opposite, that is, that One woman's shelf could be another woman's wealth.

The "ermezz berkeen." Yeah....reminds me of a scene from a sitcom in which an older lady who just won the lottery is talking with her middle-aged daughter about wanting to buy a bunch of lladros (yadros) and her daughter has to correct her, at which point she replies: "You can pronounce it—I can AFFORD IT!"

And anyway, here are some more matching things that may very well go WITH IT: