Excerpted from stylebubble.typepad.com
I hate cliches about the ‘haves’ looking down at the ‘have-nots’, the ‘labeled’ laughing at the ‘non-labels’, ‘the rich’ snobbing it up about the ‘the poor’. Most of the time, it seems to me that it’s just an oversensitivity on the part of all latter parties.
Life is rarely like Pretty Women and the posh shop assistants aren’t jeering at you – at least in this tough economic climate when they’re mainly grateful to you just for frequenting their store.
When I stumble upon a cliche, it pisses the hell out of me for the reason that I’ve always hated pigeon-holing people.
So today, when I got on the tube, sat right down and was stressfully drinking my Americano, I noticed two ladies sitting across from me giving me the oddest looks.
Did I have unrubbed moisteriser on my face? Was my hair sticking up? My outfit was a little tame/rushed so nothing to look at there. I then realised they were staring at my bag, an old and faded Vivienne Westwood number.
Then as quickly as I caught the stare, they then turned away and exchanged a sort of knowing ‘sneery’ look with each other. I had encountered the Bag Stare.
The, ‘What bag is she carrying and how much did it cost?’ sizing up act.
I kid readers not, it was ‘sneery’ and like I said, I don’t usually imagine these sort of things for the reason that I just don’t believe that people act like this in real life unless they were deluding themselves into thinking that they were playing the bitches in ‘Mean Girls’ or something.
So I returned the favour and clocked their bags, a black Hermes and a black quilted Chanel – nice, and snapped a photo of them:
I realized I had walked into a pretty typical ‘fashion snobbery’ scenario.
Not only was it cliched but it also seemed dated to me. Are people still playing the ‘I have a better bag than you’ card? Is it still the way to constantly play with the bag and swig it around (despite sitting still on a tube journey…) to demonstrate its lux-ness?
I didn’t think so until I had experienced the Bag Stare this morning.
Oh well… I would have liked to have waved around a flag that said ‘Miuccia Prada says bags are over and shoes are in…’ but then again that’s another cliched trap I’d be falling into. Let’s hope reality knocks on the door of my tube journey tomorrow.
Photos courtesy of stylebubble.typepad.com and tFS forums.
