A new J. Jill catalogue arrived the other day. I’ve been planning to buy another of their sleeveless short dresses in the “Wearever” line, since they’ve finally come out with an actual color—blue. Well, they had an actual color last year—old-lady mulberry—and I bought one of those. So now I have two: the regulation black and the mulberry number.
They’re incredible pieces for women who resent having to have decent-looking clothes dry-cleaned and who also resent having to spend an hour fiddling with their grooming before they can get out the door. All you have to do is pull the thing over your head, throw on some jewelry and a decent pair of shoes, and voila! You’re dressed!
So while I was leafing through the catalog, I came across this hobo bag:
Exactly what I’ve been looking for to replace the pricey bag I bought in a fit of depression, when my dear boss invited me to an expensive luncheon to celebrate my longevity at the Great Desert University a few days after she informed me that I and all five of my staff were to be canned. I’ve been carrying that purse about every day for almost two and a half years, and it’s only just beginning to look a little tired.
The red bag I picked up in Yarnell earlier this year, which was relatively cheap, is already acting like it’s about seen its duty, and I’ve only carried it a dozen times—if that much. The faux leather is starting to sag, and where the purse is supposed to stand up, it flops over. Still fine for casual wear, but it’s not a purse you can carry with you everywhere, in every venue but the ballroom.
Well, so I filed the existence of the J. Jill purse away in the labyrinth of my mind, figuring that if I went out to Fashion Square in hopes of finding a sale there over the Labor Day weekend, maybe I’d buy the purse along with the dress. Especially if they’d give me a break on the price.
But…fortunately before I could get myself to a brick-and-mortar store, I made a little discovery.
Poking around a closet in search of a light bed throw that might be a little less linty than the one I’m using just now, what should I come across but this:
Whaa? I’d forgotten I still had the thing. It’s amazingly aged. But y’know what? It’s a Coach bag.
It was covered in dust. I’d stashed it on the top closet shelf because its rolled edges were getting a little worn, and as I recall I’d decided to switch over to another purse. Yea verily, probably the exit-party purse.
After a good dusting and thorough oiling with leather conditioner, what you see above is what I got. Looks an awful lot like that J. Jill bag, doesn’t it? Matter of fact, I like the design a lot better.
I think I paid about $200 for it, so long ago that the Memory of Person does not stretch back that far. Quite some time ago I quit buying Coach bags, to my regret. They got rid of their beautiful classic styles—no doubt because when you have a classic purse that never wears out, you don’t keep coming back to buy more purses. They started plastering their logo, Gucci-bag style, all over their products. And I just hate that. My feeling is that if you expect me to be your walking billboard, you pay me, not the other way around. But they think otherwise: in exchange for the privilege of hauling the Coach corporate logo everywhere you go, they expected customers to pay even higher prices.
Nine West, Fossil, and J. Jill produce comparable bags for a lot less money, without the requirement that you provide free advertising, so I said good-bye to Coach.
Luckily, though, I hadn’t said good-bye to this particular pricey Coach bag. That’s $149 that I will not have to pay to J. Jill for a new purse.
My point here, money-wise, is that sometimes it’s worth spending what seems like a lot to get an item that you use all the time and that will hold up under that kind of wear. The purse I bought over two years ago has been dragged from pillar to post and back again. It’s been used to carry computer gear. It’s been sat upon. It’s been rained upon. It’s been threatened by a chewing puppy. It’s been hauled through the desert. It’s been set on the floor in public bathroom stalls where the management has removed the coat hooks. It’s been searched by security guards time and again. And when I put it away and forget about it, two or three years from now it will be resuscitated and hauled around for another two years.
Same thing with the dresses. J. Jill’s Wearever line is not cheap, and the stuff hardly ever comes on sale. However, the little dresses in that line cover my paunch so I look nowhere near as fat as I am. They’re easy to wear. They wash like a charm and come out looking brand-new. They’re ideal for church, they’re perfect for teaching, and—accessorized properly—they’d probably work for a job interview. I wear one of them at least once a week.
When you’re going to get a lot of use out of something, in my opinion it’s worth the extra money to get something that will last. Cheap junk, like the red purse from Yarnell, wears out long before its time. If you have to replace a $60 item in a year or less, you’re a lot better off paying $200 for something that will last longer than three years.
Yes, my first Coach (bought in 1992) went with me almost everywhere for eleven years. The binding wore through on the corners; I sent it to Coach for repair (free, except for shipping). The button thingy on the outside pocket went missing; Coach sent me a new one. It is somewhat darkened now from being handled, but it’s still quite presentable. I have several leather Coaches I bought at a thrift store, all but one of them for less than $10.00, so it’s worth checking. They price the logo’ed, made in China ones much higher than the goodones, at least around here.
w00t!!! Great thrift-store finds!! SDXB once found a brand-new Coach man’s wallet at a YARD SALE! Young couple getting rid of unwanted wedding gifts…apparently didn’t know what it was. I think he paid a dollar for it.
I don’t know if they still do it, but Coach used to have a policy where if they couldn’t repair a purse you sent in for sprucing up, they would offer you any bag in the catalogue at half-price. I’ve nabbed two that way, tho’ admittedly in the remote past.
Over the weekend I did find that hobo bag at the Coach store, and yes, they do want $298 for it. But it really is a gorgeous object. Add AZ’s 10% state and local taxes, and you’re over $300. I don’t know…that is a bit much for a handbag. Think I’ll hang on to the old one.
Wow. There was a time when I would spend that kind of money on a purse, but not anymore. $200 would buy me a MONTH’S worth of groceries. Gosh.
@ fern: Ain’t that the truth. Two hundred dollah buys a month’s worth of nice groceries with meat and fresh produce, not mostly beans and rice.
A week or two ago I saw an article reporting that mid-level and moderately upscale retailers are being urged to target “the elite” (their term), because so little remains of the middle class that the market who used to buy their products no longer can do so.
Heh. I guess that makes Coach, with it’s $180 to $450 purses (“relatively modest prices,” one online reviewer called them), the Target of the elite market. 🙄
Those old Coach bags are wonderful (I yearned for one, but never had one). They are so heavy though. I can hardly carry leather bags anymore–nice as they are.
Some of them do tend to be heavy. As I was schmoozing with the saleslady in the Coach store, we took down and petted a vast saddlebag she had on an upper shelf. Empty the thing was enough to make you list to the starboard or port, depending on which shoulder you decided to punish.
On the other paw, I work in jeans and a clean white T shirt.
Steve Jobs did that also.
Oh, there’s nothing like a new garment or purse to pick a girl up.
I’m amazed though, that some of you gals will stick to one purse day after day. I adore color and keep changing my purse depending on what I’m wearing. Of course I buy mine at J.C. Penney’s, to be able to do this.
Yeah, and what the heck is it with bathroom stalls that make you put your purses on the floor? Disgusting.
I gave up on Coach when they added the big ugly logo’s. I have two old ones tho – and as was said earlier they are heavy. I am looking for a new purse so might look at the one you showed from J.Jill.
Darla (reading often, commenting seldom)
@ E. Murphy: I wish I had the patience to find cute things like that (one of my students this semester has an AWESOME flair for accessories — you’d get such a kick out of the bags she carries) and also to switch all the stuff I carry around from bag to bag.
Some time ago, I read that purse snatchers will wait till a woman sits on the john and then reach over the top of the door and grab her purse off the door hook. Because the victim has her pants down, the thief can easily get out the bathroom door before she can be caught. So that’s the excuse for removing the hooks.
However, the solution is simple: place the hook far enough down the door that it’s out of reach for someone groping over the top of the door. Few proprietors do this for all users, but often the disabled stalls have the coat-hook about halfway down the door. These stalls usually have grab bars, too — depending on the size and shape of your bag, you can sometimes balance it on one of those. For these reasons and the fact that the toilet is always tall enough that it doesn’t make you feel like you’re going to fall in when you sit down, if I’m only gonna be in there 30 seconds, I always go straight for the disabled stall.
My sister got my mom a coach bag like 5 years ago and it *still* looks awesome even though she uses it almost daily.
There’s a reason I have a small number of pairs of Naot shoes. (But don’t have shoes that are *just* expensive.)
I recently pursed a Talbot’s leather purse (google Talbots Leather Frame Bag for a picture) on final sale for $60, retail is $180. I really, really like it. I had thought of Talbots as a bit of a “frumpy” brand in the past, but I have been very pleasantly surprised by the styling they recently introduced. The quality is also extremely nice to this non-designer gal.