Louis Vuitton
“You always have the same purse. I don’t think you’ve ever carried a different one.”
I was talking to BJ. At the time, we were both still real estate agents. We were coming back from a long lunch in which we avoided prospecting. She always spoke in exclamation points, even when she was calm.
“Are you kidding?! This is a Louis Vuitton! Well, not a real Louis Vuitton, my sister-in-law got me this in New York. Haven’t you ever heard of Louis Vuitton?!”
I hadn’t. I shook my head and shrugged. She wasn’t happy with that admission.
“Well, this is a famous designer purse. Well, not this one because it’s a knock-off, but the real thing goes for like a thousand dollars.”
She huffed and picked up her very famous purse and once again, I felt out of it. I felt like the day I got into junior high and learned that blue jeans were not enough. I should have been wearing Levis 501 Button Fly Blue Jeans.
A few years later, my brain became infected with the Louis Vuitton design again. Hugh wrote this incredibly funny story about the scar on his hand and the Bag Lady.
Once again, I found out too late that the cool purse to have is the Louis Vuitton. I thought to myself, where can I get a Louis Vuitton knock-off? I’m not going to New York just to find one. I bet they sell purses like that in San Francisco. Maybe I should plan a trip.
“God, I wish Salt Lake City was the kind of town where slimy people sold Luis Vuitton knock-offs on street corners,” I thought to myself.
I became obsessed. Sure, I could have bought the purse online directly from Louis Vuitton for $1130, but I wasn’t willing to shell out that kind of cash for what the cool girls were carrying. Plus, if a knock-off is good enough for BJ and the Bag Lady, a knock-off would be good enough for me.
After two months of consciously wishing for a Louis Vuitton knock-off store in the Salt Lake Valley, I went to Valley Fair Mall. There were three, count ‘em, THREE stores selling purses that look like Louis Vuitton bags. I willed those stores into existence with the power of my mind. I bought two purses and a set of luggage.
A month after my knock-off binge, Mike asked me, “These purses that you’ve been buying, are they a new thing?” I shook my head. I had remembered seeing a purse with that monogram logo as a child. That’s why I had asked BJ about it. “No, I think it’s from the seventies or something. They didn’t have them in Salt Lake in the seventies, but I think I saw them on television.”
He smiled knowingly, “I think I know why you’re so obsessed with them.” I laughed, “You do?” Mike nodded; his voice was almost singing, “I saw High Anxiety last night.”
I laughed. “I love that movie. Man, I haven’t seen that since I was about twelve.”
“Do you remember Madeline Khan’s character?”
“Yeah, I think she was rich.”
“Well, she was carrying one of those kinds of purses. Later in the movie, she had a dress and shoes with that design on them. Even later, her whole room was done in that monogram stuff. I think her car was painted like that, too.”
We laughed together. “I must have remembered that. I loved Madeline Khan. She was so funny.”
Like a virus, the idea of that monogram print on a purse invaded my mind only to resurface years and years later. How’s that for marketing?
How long ago was this? What were the stores called and are they still there? How much did you pay for your set of luggage?
Comment by Clark — 6/15/2009 @ 6:09 pm