I hate Coach purses. A few weekends ago my BF and I went down to Birch Bay across the border to have one last mini vacation before the end of summer to relax and of course take advantage of all the ridiculous deals America has to offer.
Seriously, if we had a Ross in Canada, I would probably be there every weekend. Maybe it’s a good thing we don’t have it here. I still can’t get over how cheap everything is in the States though! A bottle of wine for $5? I don’t care if it’s terrible, it’s f***ing $5!!!
Sorry, I’m digressing. I just get really excited about cross border shopping. Any who, besides going to Bellingham to shop at the Bellis Fair mall, we hit up a few outlet malls along the way too. I’ll be honest, we did about two full days of shopping with one day of rest in the middle and it was awesome. However, once we arrived at the first outlet mall, I started to notice something very strange that I never noticed back home: everyone was wearing at least one brand name or designer piece of clothing or accessory.
The first thought I had was “Isn’t there a recession happening down here?” It sure didn’t look like it as I watched almost every woman carry around a Fossil, Nine West, or COACH purse and every man wear a Nike, Hollister, or Tommy Hilfiger shirt. At first, I reasoned that maybe those brand names were just way more affordable in the States as opposed to Canada. But after checking a number of price tags in the COACH and Nike stores, the prices still weren’t that cheap.
A COACH purse at its cheapest is $200. No offense to anyone who likes those purses, but what’s the big deal with all of them? $200 for a small purse with a bunch of “C” s all over it? I do get that the point of buying this type of purse is to show off that you have a designer purse and that you are wealthy enough to afford one, but is that really the case? Most of the women I saw walking around with those types of purses did not look like they could afford them at all! Plus, I’ve watched enough of the Real Housewives franchise to know one thing about purses: if you have real wealth, you don’t buy COACH, you buy Chanel.
Near the end of Shopping Day 2, I think the brand name thing started getting to me because I really considered buying this pale blue COACH purse that was on sale for $180. I have never spent more than $40 on a purse in my life, but call it crowd mentality, call it me wanting to feel outwardly wealthy for a bit, but I was seriously 5 minutes away from bringing it to the register when my BF asked me “Do you really want to pay that much for a purse?”.
Then I stepped back and realized what I was doing. No. No, I did not want to spend that much on a purse. Not until I can actually have the lifestyle that goes with it at least. Even then I might still not want to pay that much for a purse. I’ll stick to the $30 purse I got from Ross thank you very much.
What are your thoughts on wearing designer labels? Do you prefer labels to generic brands?
