Carried Away

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Of course, years ago, if your mom was really chic (and sufficiently well-heeled) she didn’t carry a purse at all. In the recent retrospective of Nan Kempner’s wardrobe at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, the late socialite’s closet was re-created in breathtaking detail—all 354 jackets and 362 sweaters—but her surprisingly undistinguished collection of handbags was relegated to a high shelf and mostly hidden. Actually, Kempner, like many women of her age and class, frequently didn’t bother with a bag at all. (“I don’t think she needed the status conferred by the handbag,” Harold Koda, the show’s curator, told me by way of explanation.) After all, when you’re traveling from limo to restaurant table, when every bill goes directly to your husband, or your father, what do you really need to carry with you?

As it turns out, women like Kempner are the last gasp of a bagless tradition that dates back hundreds of years. In their excellent, recently reissued Bags: A Lexicon of Style, Valerie Steele and Laird Borrelli describe a trajectory that begins with Victorian women depending on tiny bags worn at the waist to carry money, keys, scissors, etc. By the turn of the 20th century, with more women venturing outside the home, the roominess of one’s bag was a reverse indicator of social status—i.e., the bigger the satchel, the more likely it was that you were fending for yourself. A miniature purse, on the other hand, was an indication of a cosseted lifestyle. Steele and Borrelli quote Vanda Foster, who noted in her 1982 book, Bags and Purses, that 55 years ago,

a woman who complained that tiny evening bags would not hold both cosmetics and a cigarette case was told that “any woman smart enough to carry this tiny handbag is sure of an escort who will provide the cigarettes.”

Cigarette-pushing escorts notwithstanding, Germaine Greer has argued that “shouldering luggage is an ancient female habit, born of servitude.” Well, maybe, but at least that servitude has now evolved into paid labor. Like Mother Courage, this indomitable working woman, carrying her miniaturized home office on her arm, makes her way through the modern world. But how exactly has this otherwise rational person been convinced that it’s OK, that it is in fact a fine idea, to spend four figures on a particular bag—especially one, in the case of Goyard or Louis Vuitton, that is not even made of leather but has instead been created from frankly cheap-looking coated canvas?

There’s something mysterious as religion—and almost as magical—that makes women so fiercely desire a particular bag in the first place, even when circumstances dictate that they may have to settle for a replica. Though Louis Vuitton, say, has been vocal about the painstaking ways in which it combats forgeries, a trip to Canal Street—or the avenues leading to the Porte de Clignancourt market in Paris, or a certain subway tunnel in Moscow—proves that the company’s efforts, while valiant, are mostly futile. In contrast to most fashion books, Finney’s Budget Fashionista is at least sensitive to the patently obvious reason people buy counterfeit bags in the first place: In a chart of “expensive” versus “budget” accessories, Finney’s line of demarcation is $50, accurately reflecting what most Americans are willing to spend on purses, real or fake. Anyone who wants a phony Louis Vuitton bag can find one, and it’ll probably be a pretty convincing copy—so good that Finney has a section titled “Is My Louis Vuitton Bag Fake?” Here she unintentionally reveals how difficult it can be to tell the real from the mock. She cautions that you should make sure that the color of the handle exactly matches the piping (a ridiculous concern, in reality, since the leather trim on a Louis Vuitton bag will fade unevenly), and that the dustcover not have rounded corners.

But does buying the fake bag afford the frisson of pleasure that purchasing the $2,000 version brings? Or, put another way, can an inauthentic bag provide an authentic thrill? It depends. For the sort of person who is troubled by the fact that her dustcover has the wrong corners, the phony bag, which she knows full well is merely similar but not identical to the one Gwyneth Paltrow carries, is a haunting reminder of failure. But for another kind of customer, the same purse can function as the sartorial equivalent of a Palladian villa that is meant to look 300 years old but is in fact newly built.

Two blocks from my Manhattan apartment, street vendors have set up a table on the corner of 14th Street and Fifth Avenue, where they do a brisk business in bogus Fendi spy bags, Marc Jacobs–esque quilties, and other artful reproductions. There’s no fake Chanel trash bag (though the classic double-C bucket is represented), nor to my knowledge has faux Goyard popped up yet—but a friend reports that he has seen it on the streets of Hong Kong, so it can’t be far behind. One day recently I watched as a very stylish young woman came to a screeching halt in front of this table and reached with both hands for a humongous floppy pink ersatz Balenciaga bag, its voluminous tassels gaily flapping in the breeze. She couldn’t have looked happier if she were leaning on a showcase at Barney’s.

And for a long time I thought I was just like her—insouciant, daring, willing to mix the real and the fake with chic abandon. That is, until a few years ago, when Louis Vuitton introduced a line of bags created by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami, and I was immediately entranced. It’s true that I am easily entranced, but these bags—some of which were rendered in white with multicolored “LV” initials, others decorated with cherry blossoms sporting smiley-face centers (better looking than it sounds)—played with the then-stodgy monogram pattern in a way that I found irresistible. Unfortunately, I was not alone. The clerk at the company’s Fifth Avenue flagship store informed me, in that chilly way unique to high-end store clerks, that the bag I wanted, the one with the inane flowers, was wait-listed. But then she took not just my name and phone number but also an imprint of my American Express card—a clear indication that this sale was a done deal as soon as the next shipment arrived.

Or so I thought. Finally, after months without a call from Louis Vuitton, and feeling like Olivia de Havilland waiting for Monty Clift to show up in The Heiress, I went downtown and handed over $38 for a rather imaginative facsimile that some anonymous creative genius deep in the Chinese mainland had enhanced with silvery trim and a row of nail heads—not Murakami’s original design, it’s true, but not so far off that anyone but a real aficionado would notice.

The bag was charming, and I got lots of compliments on it, but in the end, to my shame, I was not able to make my peace with its second-class status. After a few outings, it was relegated to a high shelf, where it rested with authentic bags of seasons past, while I, for my part, turned my attention to a crimson Goyard painted with stripes and a monogram in blue and yellow, colors that signified absolutely nothing except, perhaps, my willingness to spend thousands of dollars on a handbag.

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