Girly Stuff

by Diane

This is a blog about Buying Stuff. Especially women’s clothes. If you’re not into that kind of thing, Look Away Now. (Doubtless we will return to our relentlessly Professional/Scientific mode later. … Am I wildly excited about the bedrock outcropping on Mars? Of course I am. Are you nuts??? But we’ll get to that later.)

[girly mode] It has to be said that Brugge is simply one of the great shopping cities. How it got that way in the modern era (for it certainly was one in the 1400’s, though it lapsed later), I wouldn’t venture to guess. Others probably have better data. But here you can go from The Tintin Shop to (right next door) the Airsoles Shop (vital for those of us disappointed with Ecco this season) to the holders of the Belgian Crown Warrant for Chocolate. (In their very window they have the waffle iron by which they will make, for you, fresh mini waffles stuffed with praline. Oh, My, Goddess: Drag Me Away Now! …But not before I can send a box of them to my mother-in-law.)

Anyway, right now the town is full of signs in shop windows, and the signs say “-50%! -60%! -70% op!” “Op” meaning “Off”, in English, as you might guess. Everyone is dumping their winter goods for the “Niew Collectie”, which I shouldn’t have to translate too hard for any English-speaking [girly] shopper. (Are there still boys here? OK, they have boys’ clothes here too.)

As usual, the locals have stripped the place mostly bare before I got here. Alas. …Nonetheless, there are a few choice possibilities…which nevertheless put me off.

The leather car-coat (I use the term to suggest its length rather than anything else) that I picked up in Munich a few years ago is now showing its age. The leather was never that thick to begin with. Now it’s got a couple of tears in unhappy spots, especially over where the strap for my purse goes. So, time for a new coat.

The goals: Get something Classic. Something that won’t show its age within seconds if not days. (Like the much-beloved Jaeger wool/cashmere coat of some years back, which turned out to have unremovable shoulderpads. Argh.) And none of these “unreconstructed”, stitched-together skins that were all the rage here last winter, either (and are being cleared out right now with the usual blinding speed). I want something that will last another three-four-five years. Ideally, another leather coat, maybe shearling-lined: or a wool/cashmere one: either way, in a belted “bathrobe” wrap. If there are buttons they should be high so as to protect any scarves underneath from the elements. (I collect Hermés astronomicals, and various others to keep my poor weak throat warm.) The coat needs to be sort of boot-length or so. That’s about it.

Anyway, I wandered the town far and wide. Nada. There were a few shops that had something that would have worked had I been a guy, and six foot six. (Not today.)

And after much searching, I stumbled across a branch of Max Mara.

Okay. The coats were nice. They just about fit the bill. Cashmere/wool, black, simple, the right length, the right style. Lovely.

But I balked. Because the coats were nearly identical to ones I had seen (unbadged or store-badged) in the Globus and Jelmoli department stores in Zurich. (These would be about equal in general style and quality to Bloomingdales or Nordstroms in the US.) But these coats cost (converting currencies here from SFr to Euro) about five hundred Euro more.

For the name “Max Mara.”

This really annoys me. The style of the Mara coats is no different from the Globus and Jelmoli ones. (I mean, how much can you alter a bathrobe’s style, short of edging it with platinum or diamonds?) The weight and warmth of the weave was the same. The hand of the material was the same. And Max Mara wants me to pay FIVE HUNDRED EURO more for their tag in the back?

Sorry. I’m off for Zurich next week, and I’ll get the new coat there. I would sooner choke myself than buy one of these Max Mara things. Where do they get off??

Feh.

We now return you to your previously scheduled blog.

(Max Mara, gonif!!)

[/girly mode]

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