What is it about bags...

[ChishandFips33]

...that cause so much negative reactions??

A poster asks advice about a £20,000 kitchen

A £2,000 watch /ring
and gets great advice/support

...but ask about which designer bag to buy for £1000+ and it's a different story: ie advice to spend it on something else/give to charity

I'm not a big spender so get the 'value' perspective but why do bags cause this reaction?

I think people just see bags as a bit of cloth or leather, whereas a piece of jewellery is precious metal/stones and a kitchen is an entire room.

Although I have never had a bag as I just shove everything in my pockets, I have no objection/shock at people spending their own money on something that they enjoy. I think there's a slightly puritanical streak in the average MN user though and they see it as too frivolous to "waste" money on. , , and are the only luxuries permitted!

A new kitchen increases value of your property generally above what the kitchen cost so is an investment. It will be used multiple times every single day.

A piece of jewellery lasts forever. It generally can't be damaged, go out of style etc.

A bag is an accessory. It's style will have an expiration date. Every time you use it it's value and condition will deteriorate.

I do see the benefit in buying a decent bag. A good quality leather with good stitching etc. But, only upto a certain value. Probably 500 quid. After that you are only paying for the brand name.

The price of "it bags" has gone through the roof recently. In 1998 I bought a full proce Miu Miu tote for £140 with my Christmas money! Ten years ago the Marc Jacobs Stam was £650ish. Now the It bag of the day is usually something nudging two grand. Inflation doesn't cover it - it's just fashion houses have found the luxury bag market isn't that price sensitive because people want to spend a lot. So they make huge profits on bags and less on clothes etc.

I think it's because with bags, after a certain price point, you can only be paying for the brand name.

You can buy a quality bag in beautiful soft leather for a couple of hundred quid. It just won't 'be' a Mulberry/Birkin/Chanel.

Jewellery can last generations. (I still wouldn't spend more on something just because it was labelled Tiffany, though.)

Kitchens are part of a house, and every dollar spent adds value to your biggest asset. They're not comparable at all.

(At the end of the day, I couldn't care less what anyone else spends their disposable income on, though. Just trying to explain why the massive markup on designer bags is baffling to us non-bag people!)

IMO, once you get to the price point where a bag can be deemed
Good Enough Quality To Do It's Job For A Reasonable Length Of Time
(and reasonable is subjective, i know. An evening bag used 3 times a year to hold a lipstick wont take the same punishment as an everyday handbag) then anything over and above that price is money paid purely for the name or any particular workmanship. Like a hand painted scene of the madonna and child on the front

Over £100 is getting daft. That doesn't mean i wouldn't pay it if i really fell in love with it mind you. And there we go.

It's funny isn't it. There are two threads in S&B at the moment, one poster asking advice about an investment watch and getting lots of helpful replies, and another asking about handbags for a similar price point and getting replies like "I would be sick to my stomach if I spent that much on a bag"

Spend your own money on what pleases you, I say.

There is something so misogynistic about the reaction of mumsnetters about bags. How dare a woman waste money on something without a function. You just don't get men acting in a similar dickish way over a man spends money on. When a man spends money on stuff no one ever tries to guilt him into giving it to charity. Or is it that men stuff is always useful because they're men and you know all clever and insightful so they can never waste money?

I have been involved in just about every expensive bag debacle thread over the last few years as i love bags and its like I am a moth drawn to a flame. On a day of these 600 women's marches about women's rights, including your right to blow your own hard earnrd money on a bag, I couldn't be bothered to deal with the irony of women acting in a dickish way on the same day. So I hid the thread as soon as I saw it. And will probably hide this one too.

Hear hear Blingy - I couldn't agree more!

I was told on here that I should have spent the £800 I spent on my Mulberry, on a painting that everyone could appreciate. I was selfish and shallow for spending that much on a bag apparently, my thought processes were incomprehensible and it said a lot about me as a person that I would waste money on such a purchase.

Agree entirely with Blingy.

Are you insane? Thou shall not have the nice bag of your dreams.

Instead you will buy a £15 piece of shit from Primark that is completed by children's blood, sweat and tears. And then you will give all the rest of your money to a (mumsnet approved) charity of your choice - 'Mothers Against Greggs' 'Save the World From the Mis-Spelling of Infants Names' and 'The National Rest Home for Outdated Boden' are all very worthy causes.

For that is the Mumsnet way.

Agree with bling - kitchens are for the whole family's use, art everyone gets to appreciate, a watch is something that men value too- bags are just for the woman's enjoyment and therefore a waste.

It feeds into the same attitude that once you become a mother you have no right to ever care about yourself. Like the stuff about why woman bother with makeup for the school run unless they are going to work afterwards - some smug twat will say they care more about spending time with their dc than pampering, making it clear that "you" no longer are worthy of effort.

(Disclaimer - I have one older mulberry Bayswater and a couple bags round the £200 mark, but no longer have anything like £1.3k for a bag, still love the threads with the pretty bags!)

"Save the World From the Mis-Spelling of Infants Names"

And its sister charity, "Save the World from Missing Apostrophes"

It feeds into the same attitude that once you become a mother you have no right to ever care about yourself

Absolutely spot on. And fits in right alongside the misogyny of Trump and his supporters. Women will never ever be true equals with men while we have the Trumps of this world in leadership positions and women who behave in misogynistic dickish ways towards other women over things like handbags.

SoupDragon you can also add in a charity for "missing words". I was so cross writing my post I couldn't get the words out fast enough.

I dunno. I don't comment negatively on bag threads because people can spend their money on whatever they want, but from my own point of view, if it was just me spending my money...

The watch thread is about marking a milestone achievement. I don't know if the OP there has clarified what that achievement is exactly, but I think that would make the item a bit more meaningful, so I would feel better about spending a lot of money than 'just because', if every time I then looked at the item I remembered what it was I'd done and how hard I'd worked and people I'd met along the way etc. Also, OP is buying a watch which, like pp have said, she can pass on to her great grand children - after having worn it pretty much every day, because that particular watch will go with everything (well, it would go with everything in my wardrobe...)
Bags, meanwhile. Fashions change faster in bags, I think. Also, my bags get worn out. Doesn't matter if they're great quality, daily commute on public transport, hoiking around all my stuff... A bag lasts me a year, tops, before it starts to look a little sad.

Also, I would worry more about an expensive bag being stolen than a watch, just because the watch stays strapped to me while the bag gets put down.

A great bag and a great haircut are two of my absolute must haves. I'm not keen on lots of very expensive jewellery as it isn't remotely compatible with my life walking round a big city (I really don't want to attract muggers or burglars) and I can't wear most shoes (difficult feet) so don't indulge myself on those fronts. A bag is an essential anyway - you might as well have a lovely one and enjoy it.

I also like Mulberry Bayswater bags but surely, you coudn't possibly come by one for just £200? Anyway, anything over £1000+ is out, unless you're a collector. There's obviously some value to designer bags, I've seen that on Antiques Roadshow.

It's not misogyny at all, I'd say the same to anyone about a bag. You don't get what you pay for with them, that's my beef and it feeds into the whole "labels" thing.
I'd love a YSL bag, there I said it. And if it was the £300 I think it would be worth tops I'd buy it now.

I agree with pp that it's because however nice and well made the bag is, you are just paying well over the odds for the name. I think it's this that people find unpalatable. I think a lot of us waste money in our own way. I would never buy a designer bag but over the years I've probably wasted the value of one, on clothes I didn't need and didn't wear much. I am ashamed of that.

Blingy you are so right. My husband has a laptop that cost somewhere around the £1,500 mark. He uses it for gaming, watching TV and browsing the net in his downtime. There's no especially productive purpose to it, and he'll get a new one once it's 3-4 years old. I don't mind at all, it makes him happy.

I suspect if I were to ask Mumsnet to recommend a £1,500 laptop I'd be inundated with helpful replies but the same question about a bag would bring out the "spend £40 on a Next bag and donate the rest to charity, you selfish cow" commenters. There's very much a self-loathing element to it.

Weddings and engagement ring threads are the same though. Woe betide you do anything more exotic than wrap a twist tie around your finger and marry in your painting clothes with two witnesses grabbed off the street at 8am on a Tuesday. The marriage won't last otherwise, you see

But why is it unreasonable to 'waste' money on a 'name'? People 'waste' money on all kinds of shit, pretty much everything that most people own is unnecessary, why the intense vitriol directed at bags?

I don't know gobblers. maybe because jewellery, cars etc have always been prenium, whereas the expensive designer bag is more of a new thing?

rubybleu I think that's such a good comparison. Although I would also add that laptops are seen as potentially useful and like watches are of course used by men, so they are seen as "okay". Anything that is solely used by women and is expensive is just not worthy. Because contrary to L'Oréals advertising campaign, we are women so we are just not worth it.

I agree with pp that it's because however nice and well made the bag is, you are just paying well over the odds for the name.

But people don't get roasted for buying a more expensive kitchen over, say, an Ikea one.