It happens all the time: One minute I'm leafing through a magazine, idly scrutinising a handbag or a pair of shoes or some bauble or other, thinking, 'Hmmm, that's quite nice,' or, 'Don't know, have to think about it,' when I catch sight of the price and realise the items I'm being so-so about cost more than the monthly mortgage with a pretty wild grocery shop on top. Here's a bag that costs £795, shoes that cost £500, and what about this lovely necklace you'd wear once at a dark party and then lose in the back of a cab on the way home, a snip at £625.
Slowly it dawns on me: every single item I'm turning my nose up at is totally out of my league; a bit like some spotty student with bifocals shaking his head at Uma Thurman saying, 'Not sure you're my type, love.' That's when I realise it's happened again: I have landed in a different world - Planet Accessorise - and the aliens aren't exactly unfriendly but they're no cheap date either.
The murky world of accessorising is already stressful enough without being so expensive. Every time I get dressed it's like trying to pass my A levels again. Nine times out of 10 I steer clear of jewellery - bracelets, rings and all the other limb-junk. Every so often I will sling a necklace on, and if it doesn't turn my skin green, I will wear it for that 'season' - my seasons lasting approximately 15 years or until the item gets lost, broken or ripped from my neck by a soon-to-be-disappointed mugger.
The same goes for shoes: I'll wear them until they collapse underneath me on important professional outings. My handbags are pronounced dead by the same forensic scientists who attend murder investigations. It would nice to pretend that I live by the Chanel maxim 'less is more' but the truth is I'm completely clueless about how to accessorise - I have no taste, no 'eye' whatsoever. If I spent one day trying to dress like Sienna Miller I would end it fitting on the floor.
Admittedly then, I'm probably not the best placed to comment on 'must have' accessories, but still, could anybody point me to a real live human being who actually owns a £795 bag? And then throws it away after three months and gets another one? Because I just don't understand how anybody in the normal world affords it. And if they are affording it, if they are refusing to live without their inessential essentials, their 'little treats', what happened to me? When did I join the Amish community, sitting with my wimple on, shaking my head sadly at the waste and dissipation of the modern world? Where girly consumerism is concerned, I want in - no woman ever got a bouquet from a man thanking her for being a drudge.
However, I'm not sure I'm made of the right stuff. You'd need nerves of steel to overspend on this level. Leaving the starving millions out of it for one minute, closer to home surely these people have mortgages, overdrafts and credit card bills like everybody else? It's all very well saying 'must have' but what about 'must eat'?
I have a theory: maybe some of these women (and it is mainly women - I've known men who have kept the same underwear for so long their buttocks are imprinted on them like the Turin Shroud) are secretly in trouble. It could be that they've taken to living in their expensive handbags in the same way down-on-their-luck high flyers used to live in their cars. They are the new Bag Ladies, determined to keep up appearances with the latest ludicrously over-priced offering, but consequently find themselves unable to afford to live in a house. And so they sleep in their handbags at night, arising at dawn to wash in a puddle and comb their hair with tree bark. But it's all worth it because someone says, 'Ooh, nice bag' in the work canteen. In this way you have got to hand it to the Bag Lady - it might be pricey, but self-esteem doesn't come much simpler than this. I have no axe to grind about how women choose to spend their hard-earned or hard-borrowed cash. Whatever makes you happy, go for it; buy it, though it might be better if you shoplifted it occasionally. Who am I to talk, anyway? I'm not exactly sticking a bowl on my head and cutting my hair myself, or saving bits of string for some non-specific emergency. I never deny myself a book, a bottle of wine or a lipstick. Saying that, I just don't seem to have the reckless must-have Bag Lady gene - I can't help looking at these over-priced items and thinking - come on girls, nothing is that nice. Not until it's copied by Zara, anyway.
