It did not, I have to say, take long for my sympathy for the woman who had her designer handbag stolen from a changing room in Oxford Street to evaporate into thin air. And that was when I read the headline to the story: “The moment an influencer had her £10,000 handbag stolen while shopping for designer clothes”.
That little word, “influencer” – the human equivalent of Bitcoin, having no intrinsic merit or interest but merely the value assigned by the many-headed – would have caused that well of human sympathy to dry up all by itself. But the words “£10,000 handbag” crowned it. Friends, there is no handbag on earth worth about a quarter of the median wage. Nothing sums up more the vulgarity of the culture than the fact that it’s now de rigueur for a young woman to flaunt £10,000 worth of designer handbag as a measure of success. As an artefact, the Hermes JPG Shoulder Birkin, in red is an attractive piece; it’s well made and an intelligent take on the original designed for Jane Birkin. But it is not worth the best part of my annual rent.
Formerly rather grand people, and simply respectable people might carry a well-made bag – the late Queen Elizabeth was indistinguishable from hers – but they were not look-at-me bags. They were functional, they were well made, but they were made to be carried, not flaunted. But that was when nicely brought up people didn’t feel they had to show their net worth on their arm. Now every vulgarian can do it with bags that are meant to make the simple point – I Have Made It. It’s excessive, it’s ostentatious, and it’s designed to provoke envy. So it’s not wholly surprising if these ridiculous accessories get stolen by unscrupulous, often organised, thieves.
It is wrong to steal... but the people who flaunt their designer pieces are inviting envy from those who see them
The number of luxury thefts in London has gone up by 22 per cent in the past year – with nearly 10,000 watches, handbags and pieces of jewellery stolen. Are we really surprised?
And what’s true of designer handbags is true of designer watches, with Rolex and Cartier leading the league of most-stolen watches. One man who works for one of the pre-eminent names in that rarefied market once told me that a good, a really good, well made, handsome watch could be made for £500-£600. But, he said, you can’t possibly sell it for that. Oh no. These watches aren’t made to tell the time. The purchaser of a Rolex, a Cartier, a Philippe Patek would feel short changed, as it were, to pay less than £10,000 for their watch. You simply have to charge them so much they feel that they have something really valuable. Some cost £30,000, which is, I’d say, the sign of a vulgar plutocrat.
Think on it: you are selling a lifestyle, an aspiration, a confirmation that you can hold your own with other designer watch wearers. That’s why their advertisements mention memories, Love is All, holding the thing in trust for the next generation; anything but the price. And that is why I feel rather less sympathy for those whose watches get nicked by organised criminals than for some unfortunate whose purse is stolen from her handbag while she’s in the queue at the supermarket.
It is wrong to steal; it’s one of the simplest of the Ten Commandments. But the people who flaunt their designer pieces are inviting envy from those who see them. Look at Me is pretty well the object of the exercise. Of course a century ago, any old duchess wearing diamonds might similarly have been targeted by the Raffles of the era, but the duchess would keep her diamonds for very special occasions; she wouldn’t have flaunted them routinely …nice, understated pearls would be for day wear. And understatement is exactly what’s absent from London’s successful now, though the same is not quite true of France. The gist is, More is More, See my Designer Stuff, Suck this up, losers.
A while back, a wealthy young Omani man was stabbed by thieves in Knightsbridge who were after his Patek Phillipe. It was desperately sad. I thought at the time that the bloody watch had cost an awful lot more than the ridiculous sum he had paid for it, for it had cost a life. But we haven’t learned.
How about buying handbags which are well made and attractive but not the equivalent of a salary on your arm? Or a watch that tells the time and is hand made but is not only affordable for Elon Musk? It’s time for a social revolution to marginalise those who try to impress us with their designer everything. How about a return to understatement? How about not seeking to provoke envy when you buy your accessories? You’d have a better chance of hanging onto these things if they don’t embody the aspirations of nitwits.
Melanie McDonagh is a London Standard columnist
