by Anna Kunnecke
If you want to cause a ruckus, you could always carry around a fake bag in Tokyo. I had no idea. Near-strangers will rush up to you and hiss anxiously, "Um, did you know that your bag...isn't real?"
There is an alley somewhere in California so famous for its designer knockoffs that it once featured in a Sex And The City storyline. When my old buddy found herself in that fabled spot a few months ago, she grabbed me a satchel and sent it to me as a lark; she knew it would make me smile.
The thing is, I had been wishing for a new bag. And this one is black and soft and slouchy and has nice shiny silver hardware on it. It can be folded small and chic or opened up to hold great piles of stuff, and the handles are soft and forgiving on tired shoulders. I took a little shine to it.
For the record, I am the proud owner of a legitimate leather reticule with a venerable French name on it, and it was expensive and beautiful and worth every penny. (Even though I paid in yen.) I've used it every day for nearly four years now, and it's a bit battered but still elegant and functional. I walked into the store several months pregnant and plunked down a wad of cash for the lizard-embossed taupe rectangle that would serve as briefcase, diaper bag, and everything in between. It was a poignant rite of passage, to buy myself something both substantial and decadent with money I'd earned myself.
But four years later, I'm ready for a little change. So I just threw my shiny new impostor over my shoulder one day, not thinking of anything other than the fact that it would look hot with my shoes. It attracted rather more attention than I expected. Friends looked askance. "What's up with the bag? Where did you get it?" was a polite way of saying, "I hope you didn't pay full price for that, honey, or you are one naïve customer." I got curious, and kept carrying it. Interestingly, of all the people who commented on it, not one person mentioned the poor designers whose pockets were being gouged by the scourge of knockoffs; the ethics of copying didn't really seem to be part of the problem. One friend finally put her finger on it:
"It says something, that you might not know it's a fake."
"Well obviously it's not real leather; it's vinyl!"
"That's not what I mean. It's like you don't value yourself."
This struck me as ironic. Women all around Tokyo, and not just wealthy ones, carry thousands of dollars on their wrists, and what I usually wonder when I see them is what they had to do in order to afford it. You hear tales of young girls performing sexual favors to feed their designer habit, or hostesses who wheedle expensive trinkets from hapless customers as tokens of affection. When every train carriage is populated with an explosion of the particularly ubiquitous Leather Vittleton, you have to conclude that it's not about the fashion, it's about the statement. And the statement proclaims status, but something else, too: something to do with playing by the rules.
Who knew it would be so easy to be a rebel? Me and my sweet pleather bag, we're drawing concerned gazes all over Tokyo. I am intensely fascinated by this, and secretly I'm also kind of enjoying it. Maybe I'll try a green mohawk next.
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