love to hate longchamp

This story isn’t about a piece of clothing or a particular object that I’ve hunted and lusted over for years. It is, rather, a recollection of a moment in which a certain object, a certain brand of object, hunted, even haunted, me.

I first came across Longchamp handbags when I was in high school. Attending an all girls school meant that once something was in fashion you were a moron if you didn’t immediately conform. But the headmistress let us know that fads didn’t mesh with our Scottish, quilted uniforms. She banned Livestrong bracelets, Crocs, and leggings. Our everyday attire fell somewhere between Harry Potter and the cast of An Education (God bless that costume designer, I think she won an Oscar for it).  

 So, all my friends decided to adopt Longchamps, but being the non-conformist that I like to think I am, I resisted the idea of even getting near one. But I should say I’ve never seen an article of clothing invade a city with such urgency. It was even worse than Ugg boots. And off they went, my friends, using the bags on weekends to finish an outfit, on weekdays to carry their books to school, and sometimes even to transport sweaty gym clothes. All the exact same bags, just in different colors. Moms were using them too, and so were grandmothers. The Longchamp bags weren’t just a generational fad—they were here to stay. 

Moving to the States I thought I might finally escape their influence. It’s been three years and I’m one hundred percent sure that if you see a girl with a Longchamp bag she’s from Latin America. I don’t know why they’re such a status symbol there, I mean I know why, the money, but have you seen them? A few months after I started seeing them in school, the craze captured my mother. She bought a big black Longchamp in Argentina during the financial crisis. I immediately thought it looked like a trash bag with leather handles. My mom didn’t really care about how it looked. “It folds,” she said, “I can take it with me anywhere. It doesn’t rip, it weighs nothing, and everything I need fits inside.”  But I wasn’t going to give in. Not then, not ever, I thought.  

Then, we went on a family trip to Italy. The duty-free store at the airport was packed to the brim with Longchamp bags. My mom offered to buy me one and I said no. At the time, she’d just added a beige one to her collection. A week later we were packing for a jaunt to the Parthenon. It was an extremely hot morning in Rome and she offered to lend me the bag so I could take whatever I needed, plus a light sweater. One of the best parts about leaving home was the fact that I no longer had my mother reminding me to pack a light sweater, just in case. I had tasted the sweater-less freedom of New York and now my mom wanted to go back to basics. “Ok mother,” I replied, “whatever you say, I’ll carry the awful bag.”  

Being a tourist in Rome is exhausting. The sun, the cute Italians everywhere all the time, the gelato that calls your name. Add a mother that takes tourism as seriously as her job and you’ll understand what I’m talking about.

But the Longchamp: beige, obnoxious, once-hated, was in fact a breath of fresh air. It was incredibly lightweight, it looked good with all my outfits, and even added a little bit of a je ne sais quoi to my aura. The leather on my shoulder didn’t hurt and the bag itself was waterproof and indestructible.  

I fell in love, but I wasn’t about to admit it to my mom, or let her buy me one. What an awful brat I was back then, but growing up is tough and maturity is a dead end.  A few days after that we were walking through the streets and found a group of street vendors selling fake designer bags. Whenever they heard or saw the police they would pull a rope and their entire display, along with the handbags inside, would be swallowed in a tapestry and turned into a parcel. They could throw it over their shoulders and run away without getting caught. Getting a fake bag from them was incredibly tempting, but I remembered that a friend had told me that you can tell if a Louis Vuitton bag is fake not because of the actual print but because of the handles. They’re usually too pale in comparison to the bottom leather. The particular bag I wanted was a checkered Louis Vuitton. It was similar in shape to a Longchamp, except that it didn’t have a zipper and the handles weren’t  as comfortable. The print on the fabric was beautiful though. Gray and cream, gorgeous (I found out years later I had a thing for checkered prints and wrote an entire paper on the aesthetics of chess sets).  

I bought the fake Louis Vuitton for eighty euros, a bargain. The street vendors made some money and I wished them luck with the police. But as the trip progressed, the bag started to rip. By the time I arrived back in New York the lining was nothing but little strings of fabric. Ugh. The very next time I saw a duty-free I gave in. I chose a medium, mustard-colored Longchamp to accompany me everywhere. Mustard seemed a little bit more bold than the usual black, beige or navy bags my friends carried. But a Longchamp is a Longchamp, and I’d lost the battle. 

I’ll probably carry this essay to an editor in my Longchamp bag. I’ll then toss some yoga clothes inside and on the weekends I’ll fill it with the essentials for a sunny September day in Brooklyn. I’ll probably throw in a light sweater too, just to make my mom happy.