for as long as i can remember, my mom has LOVED Coach bags. she doesn't collect them or buy one from each collection that comes out or has any kinds of obsessions with Coach; she has a few of the classic bags that she uses for special occasions (certainly not for going to work at a hospital on a daily basis). but i just know that she's had a love for Coach for a really long time.
when i was a much younger girl, i used to borrow her purses (without asking), and for the most part she would be fine with it. i must have been 9 or 10 at the time, but one time i managed to find where she had been keeping her most expensive Coach bag and decided to borrow that one for the day. i didn't know at the time that it was a Coach bag or that it was really expensive or precious to her, so i wore it around for the day. when she came home and found i had borrowed it, she got so angry and i just couldn't understand what made her feel so strong about a BAG.
she then explained to me that Coach was a good product, that the bags were not expensive for the sake of being expensive, but rather that they produce amazing quality bags that were a good price for the caliber of material and craftsmanship you are paying for. i came to realize that what she treasured about the bags she had were not that it was expensive or that wearing them around would give her some sort of status, but rather that it symbolized a time of her life in which she is now able to afford superior quality goods. she had grown up in a very poor family, and so she grew up having to settle for less than good products for most of her life.
i think my mom instilled in me her love of Coach. and maybe not just her love of the product line, but the reasons behind that. i'm not usually a designer label kind of person. i've never shopped at American Eagle or Hollister or Urban Outfitters, partly because i know they're not worth their price: they probably use the same underpaid child laborers in Asia that all the cheaper stores use, but charge three times the price because the brand has made such a name for itself. it's not the quality you're paying for, just the reputation. but, i've LOVED Coach for the better part of a decade. when i first graduated from grad school and was setting out to find my first job in the "real world," i remember telling myself that my reward for being part of the employed community was that i would finally purchase a Coach bag for myself.
and so i did, this past weekend. it was made possible by my tax return - my first tax return as a full-time employed adult in the real world. i know it sounds silly to some people, and to others it may just seem like a completely superfluous expense - why pay over $400 for a purse when you can probably find a very similar item for $20? because of what it signifies! because to me, it means that i am a self-sufficient adult, who has achieved the kind of success that allows the purchasing, NOT of exorbitantly expensive items, but of goods and products of high quality.
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