When I first fell in love with bags a decade and a half ago, I didn’t give very much thought to the bags I lusted after and, subsequently, the ones I ended up buying. When I was younger, all I thought about was which bags appealed to me and which ones would make me happy to own, wear and carry. I didn’t think much about investment value, a bag’s staying power, trendiness, or even which bag would go best with my wardrobe. All I really cared about was what bag would exhilarate me. Which bag would give me butterflies to think about and which carryall I simply couldn’t imagine living without.
Ah, the simpler times of my youth.
Fashion Should Be Fun!
Somewhere along the way, like many collectors do, I began to make more thought-out, calculated and planned purchases. From a financial perspective, this is, of course, an excellent thing, and it’s the responsible way to go about collecting handbags.
However, when it comes to carefully planning out and painstakingly assessing every single handbag I was going to add to my collection, it was that shift in perspective that took the fun out of collecting a bit. Since the pandemic, however, I have once again shifted my perspective and reminded myself that fashion should be fun.
Sometimes it’s ok to skip the timeless classic that you know will sit in your closet for years to come in favor of a bag that’s going to feed your soul. While you may not be able to fully recoup your investment, an investment in your happiness and your overall mood is the best investment of them all.
Color Me Happy
We know that colors can have a huge influence on us and also reveal certain aspects of our unconscious minds. Whether they know it or not, humans are innately impacted by everything going on in the world around us, and the colors we gravitate towards can affect our subconscious and, thereby, our moods.
I personally have found that wearing more color and experimenting with different hues has made me an overall happier person in my day to day life. Certain shades can speak to various human needs, and when it really comes down to it, colorful bags (and any bag that feels fun and fresh, for that matter) are an investment in our happiness, and at the end of the day, isn’t that what life is all about?
While everyone’s priorities and methods of collecting are different, this year and beyond, I’ve vowed to view every purchase as a way to feed my soul, not my bank account. I want to get back to how I viewed handbags when I first fell in love with them all those years ago.
