Stylefoul: Quilted bags

| Posted Aug 4th 2006 8:55AM by Anne Metz
Filed under: Bags and Purses, Accessories, Casual wear, StyleFoul

Every time I see a woman carrying a quilted Vera Bradley handbag, I start to wonder if she is wearing it as a joke. Hipsters wear those Bjorn Borg tennis shorts or those tacky trucker hat as jokes, as if an item of clothing could say, "Hey, I'm so cool that I can totally pull off dressing like a dork."

But I tend to doubt that's the motivation. By and large, the people I see carrying Vera Bradley bags aren't hipsters. So how and when did this trend get started?

Here's what I think happened:

Some Alpha Consumer – think: pretty blonde in a very exclusive sorority – decided to play a trick on all of her lemming friends. So she combed the internet looking to popularize something worn exclusively by grannies in retirement communities. In doing so, she came across a bag so ugly, so unspeakable heinous, that she knew that her sorority girls would assume she had lost her ever-loving-mind.

But the plan didn't work. Within a month, all of the Alpha Consumer's big sisters and little sisters were carrying adult diaper bags, in various shapes and sizes. She wasn't sure if she was supposed to laugh about it or worry about it, but by that point it was too late. The trend was set.

Hmmmm ... I guess my story ran a little wayward. But it couldn't possibly be more wayward than deciding to carry around a Vera Bradley bag.

Tags: bags, diaper bags, DiaperBags, fabric, quilted, vera bradley, VeraBradley