Labels, Schmabels! Not Designer? I’m Not Buying!

A few days ago I went window shopping with my sister (yeah I’m not ashamed to say it) and we ran into a some friends from my secondary school. As we were chatting I noticed one of the girls was staring at my hand bag. When I asked her what was wrong she said “oh nothing, I just think your bag is really cute. Who is it by?” I was going to utter a name but then I remembered my bag didn’t have one.

After I told her the handbag was nameless the expression on her face immediately changed. The next thing she said “Why would you buy a bag that has no name?”

I was confused “na bad tin sey my bag no get name?” It might just be me but I found it a bit weird to find someone who valued the name behind the bag I was carrying more than the bag itself.

I mean, she was all big eyed & interested when there was the possibility of my bag being a popular brand, but when she found out that wasn’t the case her attention went somewhere else almost immediately. Did she lose interest in knowing more about my bag because it didn’t have a label?

After we left left the discussion that went a bit sour after the whole ‘bag label issue’ I sought my sisters opinion. According to her she would rather not shop at all than buy a nameless item. “I don’t know how you do it oh! All my things have names.” She didn’t even help the situation at all.

When I got home later that day I reluctantly decided to ask my “I think I’m all that and a bag of chips” neighbor. To my surprise nameless bags are her favorite. “Don’t get me wrong, I like telling people this a Michael Kors bag or these are ‘Loubs’ but all that is for ‘yanga’. The bag that can take all my junk plus an extra pair of shoes is definitely my favorite. I have tons of them and most of them don’t have names. They’re my ‘ride or die’ bags and have never removed one strand of thread. But when I need to carry just my phone and my wallet, I know the bag to carry.”
I have also had that experience; the rugged bags that can carry a lot of things usually don’t have names, although there is one Aldo bag that is giving them a run for their money.

I recall a LoveMoschino bag I bought sometime in early 2011. It took that bag literally one month to lose its ‘glam’. It got stained easily, started to fade and whenever I wanted to clean it, the fading only got worse. Around the same time I bought an Aldo bag which has lasted till date. Not to say the LoveMoschino bag isn’t a great bag but this was my experience with the one I bought.

Then again, there’s the issue of fake and original.How do you know the bag you’re carrying is the authentic version which the designer produced. Surely it is not just by virtue of the name sprayed all over it. Or do you determine the originality by the cost? In Lagos, you can’t be too sure. There are different grades of “fake” and if you’re one of those people who believes in the branding of a bag, you have to be really careful. There are some stores in Dubai and even on the streets of New York where you see some bags and you just can’t tell if it’s an original or a really good imitation. I”ve seen several bags that look ORIGINAL but are actually fakes. Forget about the ‘Channnels’ and the ‘Louisa Vouitton’, there are some fabulous forgers who make them look expensive.

The main point is this – are you buying the bag or the label? I mean the Moschino clearly cost more than the Aldo. So now I’m asking myself, if you see an item with a ‘big’ brand name, even though you know the fabric doesn’t look like it would last very long, do you still buy it? When you spend thousands of Naira and Dollars on a bag, shouldn’t that guarantee some quality? But instead you end up petting the bag because deep in your heart you know carrying that bag equals carrying a crate of eggs while riding a unicycle.  So we have to ask ourselves – how important is it for an item to carry a ‘big’ name & does it add to the quality of the bag?

Share your thoughts and let us know if labels matter to you or if you’re still rocking your nameless one like me.