Personal Dork Assistant

Louis Louis

The first engagement present came from Tom & Jess: a Louis Vuitton Azur Damier Saleya PM tote bag. Named after the Cours Saleya in the heart of Nice and the Côte d'Azur, it does look like a totally fabulous bag even to my non-Queer eyes.

The color pattern and bag design was just introduced last November and not easy to find. The Taiwan LV boutiques don't even carry the Azur line yet. I certainly haven't seen one, and the GF claims to have only noticed one once while browsing at Sogo. We're both jaded by the ubiquity of the LV monogram, legitimate and otherwise, flooding the Taiwan streets, but the possibility of carrying an almost unique LV does give one a pretentiously materialistic thrill. I do like the lighter color, too, although it remains to be seen how it'll hold up under long-term wear.

We'll have to send a nice thank-you card for the extravagant present. I guess that's the bonus for the GF being the first girl of many from the extended family to be married off. If anything will bribe the ladies to find themselves a man, a fancy bag is it. Of course, the novelty will wear off soon and maybe the 2nd will get the Gucci and a third will have Coach. By the end of the line, all they get might be a cheap Chinese canvas sack...

But wait a second, LV's spring collection just happened to feature Marc Jacob's latest inspiration: The Cheap Chinese Sack. It must be delicious post-modern irony for LV to create a bag that the Chinese would find too cheap-looking to copy. But one wonders if it was a good idea to prick the inflated bubble of fashionability and allow people to realize that perhaps the emperor has no clothes.

Then there's 王菲 (Faye Wong) who was using the cheap canvas bag for luggage ages before LV got into it, and she's always been ahead of the curve. So maybe it's just us peons who're not cool enough for school.