BLOGG # 63 "WHAT A DEAL

Yesterday I was leafing through a fashion magazine while at my doctors office when I came upon an article titled “Designer items at reduced prices” The price of one of the items they quoted was a second hand Jane Birkin lizard Crystal bag at thirty two thousand dollars. Jane Birkin, as my savvy bloggers know was a model, fashion muse, an icon of the seventies for her fashion sense and the coolest girl in Paris.  Hermes fashioned the ultimate leather woman’s hand bag at that time under her specific instructions and called it the Jane Birkin Bag.  It still is the most coveted piece of accessory today. However, thirty thousand for a second hand purse seems a bit steep and I wonder what the original price was.  To try to wrap my mind around the thirty thousand dollar price tag, I attempted to put it in my world to understand it. Thirty thousand is the yearly income of a low income family in Canada- the minimum hourly rate here is ,I believe, ten dollars an hour-eighty dollars a day, and if in luck, that amounts to four hundred per week, or sixteen hundred a month- Goodness- the math! This amounts to twenty thousand a year. Worse- A single mother with two children on welfare has to make do with about a thousand a month or twelve thousand a year and we consider her a drain on our economy. We certainly haven’t come a long way baby, in the past five hundred years or so, have we? The French king Louis XVI  was beheaded because he spent more on one meal than a peasant in an entire year and his silly jewel -encrusted satin breaches and mile high powdered wigs broke the bank. Of course we still have an occasional despot who insists on gold toilet seats even in these enlightened times- but a thirty thousand dollar Birkin bag?  Somehow this disgusts me more than the crazy French king and his mile high powdered wigs or the present day despot’s toilet seat.  It makes me wonder where we are going- especially when I think there are large populations living under the poverty line starving with  Drones at a horrendous cost, flying over their heads with intent to bomb, using the excuse of “terrorist hunting”- I really begin to wonder!   I am an optimist and have faith in the integrity of the human spirit, but this Birkin Bag has shaken it. Hopefully ,dear readers, not for long as we need much optimism right now.--   Having read my newly posted blog again, I decided I had better come off my self rightious perch and admit to liking the original Jane Birkin Bag; love reading the Vogue magazine knowing it is a self-indulgent act; enjoy fashion in all it's variations and tremble to think I am becoming a soapbox shouting agitator, so please read  my blogg with a large grain of salt.--- Your  non-agitating, peace-loving auntie blogger   Laurie