It must be bad if I'm saying this...

I was walking on Wall Street the other day after seeing my dentist and passed by the Tiffany store, all asparkle in its glittering hard surfaces and glorious bad timing. And my first thought was: what are Tiffany and Hermes doing down on Wall Street, which despite the mythic association with high finance and money still is Siberian (or at least Alaskan) wasteland? My second thought was the memory of what one of my friends said to another. The first mentioned that the Wall Street Hermes had crocodile Birkin bags; the second, a Birkin expert, said "that's not a real one, that's what a man buys his mistress, or his wife if he's feeling guilty". I'm not really sure which Wall Street area firm's employees pay $45,000 for a wife gift out of guilt (though I guess it's cheaper than a divorce), but given the dearth of bonuses this year means it probably won't be such a merry Christmistress...

And that brought me to thinking about how the economic slowdown really affects my friends and me...(not a mistress among us, as far as I'm aware). Sure, there are stories about the slowdown of high end jewelry purchases; reduced luxury goods advertisements in Vogue, New York Times, Destinations, etc; credit squeezed oligarchs and petrogarchs; Wall Street barons, dukes, etc hocking their art collections... All of that is indicative of a radical shift but at a slightly more rarified atmosphere than where I usually breathe. After all, where I go out, restaurants are still packed and bars are still hopping. But when I think about it, those restaurants are cozy, local and relatively cheap: microbrews and gorgonzola cheeseburgers. I'm not at McDonalds yet, but it's not Porterhouse, foie gras, and Opus One. I've already made the downshift without thinking about it that much.

Bringing this back to style, these concerns give a fresh look to practicality. My friend Ellen mentioned recently that she loved her Prada backpack and Miu Miu bag and was paying a bag repairer to make them like new. Why not? They work and they look good. I've had more friends get excited about clothing swaps as well, and I've personally begun to get a bit more into vintage. Ellen and I also discussed how we had a hard time finding something new in fashion to get excited about. Well, this is the season of Prada's handmade Swiss lace (Switzerland being next to China in sourcing cheap labor - not!) and Fendi's gold infused fur (below). They're both beautiful, but somehow it all seems wrong. I've mentioned before that I think we're returning to grunge. I think the re-visiting of grunge for some of us won't be Doc Martins and flannel, but will be the bypassing of new, flashy, blatantly expensive styles (croc Birkins, gold fur, Swiss Miss handiwork) in favor of what we already have in our closets and what works for us. Yeah, ok, last season's Marni (Hache, etc) is hardly grunge, but to use what we've already got feels grounded and real. (A caveat: I say this with all intentions of trying to build my cash position rather than my closet, but I'm not promising my resolve won't go flying out the window if I see that Prada lace or the Louboutins from blog #1 marked down enough...)