Logomania

When I first came to Paris (I seem to begin a lot of posts that way. I'm surprised I haven't written a book by now; everyone who spends a year in Paris seems to)-- when I first came to Paris, I was struck by how all the women in my neighborhood seemed to be wearing a uniform. The same coat, the same black dress, the same Hermès scarf, and every single one of them wore the same little black Chanel purse with its leather quilting,  its little gold chain, and its ubiquitous double-C logo that looks strangely like a cattle brand and likewise serves to identify its owner (she hopes).

"If I ever want one of those," I would declare, "I'll know it's time to leave." I even talked a man at a second-hand store out of buying one for his wife. I told him it was bo-o-o-o-ring. I'm sure she would have been furious if she had known: it was a great price and even had its original housse.

Funny, those little bags are starting to look classic to me now. I wonder if this is an omen.

Accompanying one of my many visitors who like to "lick the windows" on the rue Royale (the French expression for window-shop is lécher les vitrines), I noticed Chanel put its logo even on the staplers.

Comments

[Anne]

I get such a kick out of Chanel's logo being on everything.

I have a friend who works for Chanel near here (in the South of France) and I have never seen her without her Chanel earrings. She is beautiful and they look great...a perfect match!

[Andreea]

:) Funny. I had the same impression when I first came to US. Every one of the 30.000 students at Rutgers University was wearing the same "Jansport" backpack. To be fair, it did come in two shades, dark green and dark blue. The crowd in the student center also was split in two, with half wearing Gap t-shirts and half Abercrombie ones. I was coming from and ex-communist coutry where we were forced to wear a uniform in school so this looked very funny to me. After two years at Rutgers guess what I did? I went out and bought a Jansport backpack - the dark green one :)