I previously wrote about the bags of Southwest London, otherwise known as Posh London. Now I’m back in my home area, the Docklands, I am startled to discover that designer bags have made their way here: the first time I went to my local tesco there was a group of girls in there with Mulberry bags. The area has gone upmarket! HORROR. The first time a trust-fundy art student gives me a flyer for a pop-up vegan trainer shop I will organise a pitchfork-wielding mob. However, I find that the dominant handbag brand round here is Paul’s Boutique, which is cool as it’s a small British brand. When I used to work in the sock department of Topshop, the owners sometimes came in to tend their stand, which in fashion terms basically makes us friends.
Happily, despite the creeping Mulberries, there are still plenty of proper SE-ers around, and they mainly have knockoff versions of the bags that people carry in Posh London. A fave is obviously the easily copyable Louis Vuitton and there are a lot of Japanese students with what I imagine is the real thing. Aside from the sweatshop/terrorism aspect of fakes, I don’t have a problem with people carrying them, but I do think it’s reasonably obvious which ones are real and which aren’t. It’s not just the bag because fakes can be very convincing, it’s more that people in possession of a £1250 LV bag probably wouldn’t be buying lychee juice at midnight in the same unsalubrious newsagent as me, in the same unsalubrious state as I was last Thursday. Surely someone with that sort of bag has a person to get juice for them? That’s a new life aspiration right there.
Real:
Fake:
I’ve now introduced some statistical confusion into the mix by bringing with me my new bag, probably my first leather bag ever and definitely the nicest thing I’ve ever bought: the lovely bird-embellished Marc Jacobs bag that I loved at first sight.
I’m really happy that this is mine. It’s stealth enough that I doubt any potential thieves or judgmental juice-buyers would look at it with interest but the friendly bird and useful pockets cheer me up every day.
S
