R.I.P My Prada Bag

I love my purse. My Prada bag goes with me everywhere, and it is one of my prize possessions. It is simple, beautiful, a leathery work of art– and I did not pay retail for it. That would have required a bank loan or second mortgage. Fabulous and on sale it was a dream come true.

Sadly, regardless of my coddling and caretaking, it is dying. My Prada bag is fading fast. The corners are ripping badly and no one can save it. I’ve thrown myself sobbing on the counters of shoemakers and saddle repair people from Chicago to Southern California begging them to bring my bag back to life but alas no one has hope. “Please save my precious Prada bag. Don’t let it die.”  But its days are numbered as loose change will be falling out of the corners very soon. With dread in my heart, I have to find a new love.

I thought my mother, the Imelda Marcos of purses, might be able to console me in my despair. I don’t understand why she needs so many as I love only one.
“Mom, what could possibly go with this?” I queried as I pulled a chartreuse leather clutch off a shelf in her closet.
“You know I forgot I had that, but I must say when I bought it, the color was very popular. It was from Neimans.”

She snatched the purse out of my hands as if I would somehow damage it and put it back on the shelf. There were so many piled up that I had to save her from a large black purse falling on her head.
“Oh I love that bag, it’s a Fendi you know,” she remarked as I grabbed it out of the air. (No, I didn’t know as I’m not in the purse “know.”)

“Do you want it,Dear– it’s a Fendi,” she repeated as if I didn’t understand the significance of her offer. “They are very expenisive.”

And once again she repeated she bought it at Neimans. Mom must be the Warren Buffet of their purse department. Her Fendi bag was bigger than my Yellow Lab and for that matter my Mother.

“No thanks, you keep it,” I said my head hung in handbag despair. It paled to my Prada.

I turned to my friend Andrea for help. She told me she has approximately 75 purses. “Oh, I rotate them with my winter and summer clothes. I have to bring the purse bins up and down from the basement every season.

Excuse moi. Bins? Filled with purses? I was way behind the handbag curve in my peer group. I loved only one and she had bins. I felt desperately confused and wondered if there was anything more I could do to prolong the life of my Prada bag. Where will I go, what will I do and how much will it cost me? I fear it is only a matter of days until I will have to venture forth to Neimans, Nordstroms, Bloomingdales, Saks and perhaps as far as Bergdorfs to find love again hoping thanks to Mom I have a gene marked “handbag.”
photo by SFphotogeek