One of the reasons I can justify (somewhat justify; it’s still an exorbitant amount of money) spending a lot of money on a designer bag is by reminding myself of the quality of the materials and craftsmanship that goes into making the bag. To this day, when I take my Hermès Birkin out of the box, I immediately smell the delicious leather; my Birkin may be 6 years old but it smells brand new.
A year and a half ago, for my birthday, Vlad planned the most amazing day and took me to Chanel to pick a bag I wanted. I left the Chanel boutique with a Reissue 227 and still remember feeling shocked by the $5,000 price tag. However, Vlad and I both decided it was a great purchase — it was a bag I had been lusting after for a long time, and I was absolutely thrilled to have it.
I’ve had no issues with this bag up until last week. The PurseBlog team went out for drinks after work and I was carrying my Chanel Reissue that day. Everything was going great, we had a beautiful view of the NYC skyline, cold drinks in our hands on a hot summer day and good company. I specifically remember going to open my bag to get my lipgloss out. Typically I open my bag without looking down (I know my way around my bags), but something caught my eye. Something funny was happening.
I looked down and stared at the back panel of the closure dangling down from the flap of the bag, swaying back and forth. I didn’t panic because I was stumped — what exactly was going on? I picked my bag up and realized one of the screws that holds the backing in place fell out, and the metal panel was dangling from my bag.
Our assistant editor, Katherine, looked like she was going to cry for me. But I just stared at it, and then I showed Amanda, Bea, Shannon and Vlad. The first thing Vlad said to me was, “You need to write about this.”
I agreed, because of course I need to write about it. The fact is, a very expensive bag that I purchased not all that long ago had a part fall off. In the grand scheme of things, this is a best case scenario when it comes to having your bag break. Getting a new screw and putting it in should be an easy fix.
But the bigger problem is that this even happened in the first place.
If you remember, I shared how carefully I store my bags not long ago. My Chanel bag isn’t one of my most frequently used bags, and after each use, I put it away – first stuffing it with the paper that it originally came with, then tucked into its sleeper bag.
I’ve been too busy to go to the Chanel boutique to have the bag fixed, but when this first happened the PurseBlog team and I lamented over the idea of the what many major brands do when your bag breaks; they take it to fix it and have it for far too long.
Of course Vlad and I could go to a store to buy the right size screw and screw it into the bag, but that isn’t what I want to do. Each and every tiny bit of this bag made up the cost, and I’d love to have Chanel fix it. But more so, I’d like for things like this not to happen to my bags.
I understand any bit of wear can lead to problems, and as I said previously, this isn’t the biggest problem; there are far worse things that happen to bags. But nevertheless, when I pay a great amount for a bag, I do expect a certain type of quality.
I’ll keep you posted on what happens next.
