No Impulse Buy

I blame Japan. Until about a year ago, I would never have dreamt of purchasing a Louis Vuitton bag, finding the brand very nouveau-riche and more or less contaminated by omnipresent fakes. Who has ever been to Venice and seen (illegal) hawkers sell badly made fake LV bags, eagerly picked up by Eastern European day-trippers, knows what I'm talking about. When TD's sister bought an LV rucksack in Vienna years ago, I nearly dropped dead when I heard the price and could not understand how she (or her husband) would spend such an obscene amount of money on a bag. Well...

Then I saw all those label-crazy Japanese women sport their monogrammed neverfull bags on my journey in Japan last October and began coveting them. It was not until this January that I set foot into the LV flagship store in Vienna, a stone's throw from my office, for the first time. The Empress who has had her eyes on various types of much more expensive styles of LV bags for quite some time, willingly accompanied me. It took two more visits until I was determined that the classic monogramme (did you know the material of this type of bag is not even leather (apart from the straps, but so-called "canvas"? I didn't until recently...) might look good on the arms of Japanese ladies, but made me feel like a Russian socialite. I still really liked the neverfull, though. Eventually, I settled for the more subtle - I think - "damier azure" print. After much arguing with myself, eventually bought it before Easter but left it in the shop for my initials to be blind embossed into one of the straps, a "free" service, or rather one that is included in the not exactly cheap price, considering the material. (I would not have taken it to KLU anyway, as I wanted to spare myself my Mum's comments, who would no doubt have told me I should have donated the money to charity rather than squandering it on a boring bag.)

I'm usually not indicisive at all and incredibly good at convincing myself that I absolutely NEED another bag, but somehow, this brand felt like a glove that didn't seem to fit at once and needed to be stretched and looked at from all angles, before I was ready to open my wallet. I eventually did and really love my bag which has been glued to my right shoulder for the last few days.