My friend Susan’s neighbor in Century City has five Kelly bags. She isn’t rich; she’s a lawyer, but not a partner. Her apartment is in a good building, but it’s a small two bedroom. The five Kelly bags, in other words, represent funds that could have been put to good use otherwise. Why does this 35-year old lawyer have a $30,000 Hermes handbag collection? She told Susan, “It’s a signal. The kind of man I want to date knows what this bag means.” Susan says the lawyer—let’s call her Paula—wants to marry a very rich man, a private jet-rich man, the kind of man who is able to support a woman who wants many Hermes bags.
The love affair between women and things is so taken for granted in our society that we no longer notice it most of the time. It takes a spectacular example, like this one, to make it seem strange. Who’s heard of a man with five Hermes briefcases? Or five briefcases of any kind? If he exists, he probably isn’t straight. And if he is, he’s obsessive-compulsive, like a banker I know who bought ten alligator belts at a large discount at the semiannual saldi in Rome. “That way I can put a belt in each of my suit pants and save time dressing in the morning,” he told me. . . .
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