Tag leather

The $4,000 Cape Coat I Tried On

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Two weeks ago, I found myself in the Beverly Center, a high-end shopping mall near restaurant row in Beverly Hills. Though I hate shopping, I went there to kill some time (three hours to be exact), since my acting class wasn’t starting until the evening, and I didn’t want to brave L.A. traffic to drive home, only to turn back around and sit through two hours of traffic to go back over the hill again.

Memories of shopping trips I had taken with my mom back when I was a teenager flooded back as I walked through the mall. We used to go into the swanky stores, try on beautiful designs, and wish we had the money to buy them. As usual, the Beverly Center was filled with designer boutiques which displayed beautiful items with hefty price tags. Since I had no intention of shopping, I simply strolled by the stores to familiarize myself with them. Fendi. Louis Vuitton. Gucci. Prada. Dolce & Gabbana. Tiffany & Co. Versace. Burberry. Henri Bendel. It was an impressive display of ostentatious style.

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I settled onto a bench in the middle of level six of the mall with a cup of coffee and relaxed for a bit. Then as I was sipping my coffee, my eyes alighted upon THE COAT. There it was, just beyond the entrance of Traffic Los Angeles, a cape coat like none I had ever seen before. It was Goth, vampire-ish, Sith Lord-ish, high fashion, and utterly exquisite. It completely took my breath away. I averted my eyes as if I had been caught staring at a human object of lust. I drank my coffee, but was so compelled to stare at the coat that I finally allowed myself to do so, unabashedly. I stared at the lines of the coat, the fall of the cape, the leather piping, and was in love.

I finished my coffee, then walked into Traffic, straight up to the coat. I fingered the asymmetric neckline, then the looped belt, then the cape. A saleswoman approached me. “Would you like to try this on?”, she said with a smile. “You’re damned right I would!” was what I was thinking, but instead, I just said “Yes.”

As soon as I felt the heft of the coat sliding across my shoulders, I knew I would love it on me. It was INCREDIBLE. It fit me perfectly too.

I looked at the price tag: $4,078.

SERIOUSLY????

I realize full well that it is a designer cape coat, by Gareth Pugh. Incidentally, the saleswoman wrote down the designer’s name as Garrett Pugli, which meant that I went through a maddening search to find anything on him online. That seems very odd, coming from a high end boutique where the salespeople should be very aware of the designers, especially if they boldly throw the snobby high-pressure sales pitch on potential customers. But, let’s get back to the price of the coat. I am not even in the vicinity of being able to afford such a thing, so my heart broke. Despite my disappointment, I tried it on a few times, even after walking around the mall for an hour and a half and returning to try it on again. The salespeople there told me they could give me a 45% discount on the coat, as if that made it somehow affordable for me. At $2,242, it was still about $2,000 out of my budget. Oh well.

My love, the Gareth Pugh cape coat, is most likely still hanging in Traffic, waiting for someone with wads of cash to give it a home. Alas, I will not be the person to grant it a forever home.

My Purple Bag

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After seven years of carrying around the same dark brown leather Sigrid Olsen handbag as my main bag, I decided to purchase a new one. Though I don’t usually make larger purchases for myself that often, my birthday was approaching, and since it is a yearly ritual for me to buy a birthday gift for myself, I began searching for the perfect bag. At one point I had seen a bag that was a fun, bright yellow, and it was well outside my usual understated color range, so I bought it, only to be disappointed. When the yellow bag arrived, I discovered that it was cheaply made, the leather was very coarse and of questionable origin, the pockets were too shallow, the bag didn’t close completely, and the main strap was so uncomfortable that I developed an abrasion from where it chafed the skin on my shoulder. I returned it and resumed my search for the perfect bag.

I cannot stand shopping in stores, so I had to use my imagination when looking at options online. Then one day I clicked on a design I really liked, a red Cole Haan handbag. I watched the video posted on 6pm.com (which, by the way, is a GREAT company with a large selection of shoes, clothing and bags, with discount prices) and loved the design of the bag even more. Then when I clicked on color options, I noticed that the red option was sold out, leaving “purple reign” as the only color option. I couldn’t believe my luck in finding the perfect bag, and in my favorite color to boot!

The conservative part of my brain hesitated somewhat, because I had always gotten a dark neutral color (usually black) for my main handbag, but I fought against that tendency and placed the order. When the bag arrived, I could tell I had made the right decision. I have now had the bag for over two months and love everything about it: the pockets, the closure, the styling, the size, the designer. I have to admit that I also love the unexpected pop of purple leather, which goes surprisingly well with most of my wardrobe.

You ladies out there can understand what I am talking about when I say this is the perfect bag for me, but I may have lost some of you men. Since most women carry handbags daily, they begin to identify with a bag that is used often. Similar to the awareness of one’s car which develops over time, the same familiarity forms with handbags. Like remembering what you have in the glove box, or how the steering wheel feels, I know what I keep in my inside zippered pocket, how my sunglass case fits best next to my wallet, etc. My new purple handbag is now as comfortable as a broken-in pair of shoes.