“Or $150,” Samantha says with a randy smile: “Fake!”The siren song of the Pittsburgh steelers Skyline L C Greenwood Dermontti Dawson Joe Greene signatures 2023 shirt it is in the first place but budget baguette leads Carrie to the seedy underbelly of LA. But seeing all those plastic-wrapped bags makes Carrie feel cheap, and she walks away empty-handed. It must have been the first time I was introduced to the concept of an It bag—but also to the value of owning the real thing. (The Fake Fendi is later exposed during a visit to the Playboy Mansion; the clip of a blonde Bunny over-enunciating “Fen-di” in front of a humiliated Samantha is forever bookmarked in my brain.) She leaned in: “I’m the mother, okay? I want to give you the freakin’ world—and it’ll look so gorgeous on you.” I smiled and tried to imagine any scenario where I’d break out the baguette. While I now understood its significance, it really wasn’t my style, which—especially in my 20s—could be characterized as aggressively basic. I had no interest in making a fashion statement; what would I do with a statement bag? For a while, the baguette languished in my closet as it had in my mother’s. The first time I wore it out in the world, I burned with embarrassment like I’d decided to finish my look with a clown nose. Who was I kidding? I wasn’t Samantha Jones; I wasn’t capable of pulling off leopard pony hair. I couldn’t wait to return it to its cloth sepulcher.
But then came the Pittsburgh steelers Skyline L C Greenwood Dermontti Dawson Joe Greene signatures 2023 shirt it is in the first place but compliments. Strangers’ chilly expressions melted away at the sight of it: That bag! They came closer, eyes shining, fingers outstretched, as though they were greeting a puppy or a newborn baby. The only thing these admirers liked more than the baguette was the line I delivered to explain it. “Thanks,” I’d say with a Samantha-style laugh. “It’s a gift from some random man my mother dated.” I kept wearing it—first ironically to costume parties and then, as I got older, a bit more genuinely. I’ve now realized just how fond I’ve grown of this little pony hair bag, less as a harbinger of some future fabulousness than as a reminder of my funny family history and how my own relationship to fashion has changed. We all have things in our closets that we grow into, out of, and back into again. Clothing accrues meaning over time; moms have lived long enough to understand this. I’m grateful that my own knew to hold onto her outrageous baguette, so I could come to learn it too.