The Stam and the scam

Today's piece is my take on the theft of designer handbags (29th October, "Handbagged", page 3). It also has a bearing on consumerism in general.

It appears that designer handbags are becoming increasingly attractive to thieves, in that they are small, light, readily portable, easy to sell and worth vast sums of money on the black market. Indeed, they raise huge sums on any market. As Laura Craik put it in the article: "Fashion brands have become more savvy about marketing, using engineered scarcity to create a 'waiting list' culture in order to push up the desirability...of these items".

In other words, the designers are deliberately limiting the supply of desirable items in order for the price to go up, and they will then make monster profits. Under these circumstances, I must ask, who are the real thieves? We can see how the law of attraction works. The people who produce the bags are robbing their customers. The goods are thus tainted with theft from beginning to end, and we should not therefore be surprised they are being stolen. What, objectively, is any bag really worth? You can only carry things in it.

On the appearance front, I've just ordered a new suit. I bought it from Roth Clothing in Stamford Hill. It's where the Chasidim buy their clothes. For those who don't know, Chasidim are the Jewish gentlemen in long black coats, fur hats and beards: a familiar sight in Stamford Hill. I'm not a Chasid by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm enough of an Orthodox Jew to have a deep distaste for spending my money on advertising campaigns, window displays, shop fittings that change every week, and planet-cooking lighting systems. I just want a suit, and Roth Clothing have suits like a monkey has fleas. Of course, they are all either black or dark blue, but that doesn't bother me: I have plenty of colourful ties to cheer them up.

People think, if I have some fashion accessory or other, I can make an image for myself, and I can be the thing called cool. It doesn't work like that. You begin by working on a cool state of being, and if you are genuine about it, your actions will follow, and you will end up having an air of elegance about you that goes beyond fashion. I knew Chasidic women who could make a plastic rain hat look sexy.

Regarding consumer goods in general, I was once asked a challenging question. Do I need a vacuum cleaner? The considered answer has to be, no. If all of a sudden my vacuum cleaner disappeared and I couldn't get a new one, I could choose to research pre World War 2 methods of cleaning my carpets. Alternatively, I could rip up all my carpets and have wooden floors at home from top to bottom. So, no, I don't need a vacuum cleaner. In which case, what am I doing owning one?

Consider the current state of affairs: in my street, there are over 50 households, almost all of whom own a vacuum cleaner. Think of the environmental impact of manufacturing 50 vacuum cleaners, and of disposing of them when they fail to function. It isn't very environmentally friendly, is it? Now consider what may happen if all 50 households had a vacuum cleaner between them, and organised a rota, so that you could designate one or two hours per week in which you would do your hoovering, and then pass the appliance on to the next person. Would your carpets still be regularly cleaned? Yes, of course. You get the same solution to your cleaning problems for one fiftieth of the environmental impact.

The way vacuum cleaners are made today, they would not last very long if used so intensively. Therefore, when vacuum cleaner "pools" become popular, the makers will say, "We had better start making machines that last twenty years!" The environmental impact goes down further, and better quality goods begin to be made. Everyone wins.

The other issue is, who will offer his/her vacuum cleaner first to be pooled in such a fashion? Few people would, at least at present. So, if I were the Council, I would organise a network of domestic appliance pools in local neighbourhoods. Membership could be free or subsidised, because everything would be paid for out of council taxes. We might even be able to get EU funding for such a project. We would then begin to understand what it is to be wealthy, as opposed to being rich. Rich means, you own lots of things. Wealthy means, you have access to lots of things. Even the poor can be wealthy if you get the system to work.

This kind of principle is called Conscious Commerce. For more on it, I invite you to e-mail jjsleeman@aol.com.

If it works for vacuum cleaners, it could work for handbags. So if we must get ourselves into a hot sweat about a designer handbag, let the Council buy one of them, and any local resident can have it for one, or more, evening of her choice. Then we can all be highly fashionable for one day every now and then. I've already seen that Richard Branson's Virgin Group has a very similar scheme for luxury cars.

If we know that we will get the chance to access whatever it is we like and when we like (within reason) then I dare say the desire to steal may be much diminished as a result.

My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.