Last week I stayed at a rental house in Florida with my parents where I spent my time mostly looking at vintage designer bags on ebay and googling the birthdays of people who I believe to be close to my age. Age is irrelevant if you keep changing, but youth only happens once. I’m turning 28 next month and feeling especially mournful for how little effort it took me to feel hot at 19. I’ve never had botox, but I’ve discovered 3 new places on my face where I want it this week via tik tok. Youth is fleeting, and I’m trying to spend my 28th year not worrying about it.
But, bags? Bags are forever. I buy one or two bags every four years. I say this to justify how much money I spend on them. The certainty I feel when I find the right bag is a certainty I can’t compare to anything else in the world. The goal is to find something timeless, outwardly expensive looking, but not flashy, unique to your personal style, and rare. The silhouette is important too. The right bag should comfortably drip off your arm like a melting icicle. Like you were born holding it. When you find the right bag you know because other bag girls will make it known to you. They say, “where did you find that?”, “is it real?”, they ask the year, model, and make of the bag like they are in the market for a new car. Last week a shop girl in a trendy lower east side pop-up recognized me by my bag alone.
I started with vintage Coach bags when I was in college. My first roommate, Jacqueline, had a big green Coach shoulder tote that belonged to her grandmother. The round approachable shape of a Coach is classic, unassuming, and recognizable. No logos, just a small embossed leather tag hanging tastefully from a chain on the handle. They’re practical and reasonably priced- easy to find under $100. My high school friend’s mom lived by the rule, “nice shoes, nice jeans, nice bags” everything else can be garbage, but you will always look put together as long as you have those three. A Coach bag is sensible, but still a nice thing. Something your mother would be proud to see you carry. The vintage Coach bag is the perfect rookie designer bag for a college girl who wants something nice. I had about 5 until I turned 22 and learned about the Fendi baguette.
I bought my first Fendi for $325 on depop. I had just gotten paid to sing on a Toyota commercial and had more money in my bank account than ever before. It was a 2001 blue pony hair cow print baguette (cow print was all the rage in 2018). I don’t remember having an affinity for Fendi before seeing the bag or even having the word “baguette” as it refers to fashion and not food in my vocabulary, but I knew instantly that I needed it. I know the significance of the baguette now and it’s ties to SATC- probably why I was so drawn to it. A Fendi is slutty. Its a hoochie Miami lady with skimpy heels and a tan. Toned arms and body glitter. Slouchy and pouty and fun. A girl doesn’t wear a Fendi, a woman does. A Fendi woman isn’t looking for male approval, but men are not immune to the powers of a Fendi. A fashion photographer I slept with in 2021 once looked at my pony hair baguette draped sensually on his doorknob in the morning and asked me, “who makes that bag?” I’m proud to be an early comer to the baguette renaissance. You can’t find the one I had in perfect condition online now for less than $1200. I wore that Fendi to death until the pony hair was almost gone in the back and I still sold it last year for more than I bought it for.
Six months ago, on the hunt for something bigger, I bought a patchwork vinyl Chanel tote on ebay. It’s orange and pink and completely see through. A Chanel bag is timeless and pretty, but in my opinion harder to pull off than a Fendi. A cool Chanel girl doesn’t care if you notice her Chanel bag. She’s so incredibly fancy that she just walked into Chanel and bought a bag because she needed one and it was black and she was on her way somewhere. A flashy Chanel is contradictory, I think, and not really my style, but I’m not fancy enough to spend $6-12,000 on a black bag that, although beautiful, doesn’t feel special to me. That’s why the vinyl tote was perfect. Second hand for about $500. It’s Chanel, but it’s not stuffy. It suggests attention to detail and taste, but also a playful go with the flow attitude. A tote is a daytime bag. You can fit vegetables in it! It’s structured. It feels healthy and self assured. Youthful! It says, I’m a woman, but still a girl at heart.
In the waiting room for an appointment I’m on depop, in the security line at the airport I’m placing bids on ebay, if I have a day off I spend hours walking from consignment store to consignment store searching for something I haven’t seen before. Sometimes I wonder if quite literally, “securing the bag” isn’t the point. It’s the journey, it’s the reason to look forward to something. If I found the perfect bag for a reasonable price, would I even want it? It would be too easy and then it would be all over. What would I do while I wait in line? How would I spend my lonely days off?
Stay with me here as I completely digress. At 27 and 11 months, I’m putting out new music soon for the first time in almost two years. Last week I saw a tik tok of Charli XCX talking about how music is not important- artistry is important, and I’ve thought about it every day since. My dad made enough money to buy our house by doing session work as a jingle singer in the 80’s and 90’s. After that he started a wedding band on Martha’s Vineyard where the wealthiest people in the world get married. Musicians are so cool. My dad is really cool. He has command over an audience and can make chatty people to turn their heads and listen, a skill I’ve yet to learn. I’ve never heard him sing a note out of tune and when he makes a mistake its so flawlessly covered up you’d think it was on purpose. A real pro. I have a small voice. I still struggle to hear myself over my band sometimes. I’m not an amazing instrumentalist and I owe my band more than I could ever give them because I don’t know how to engineer or record my own music. These are all things I can and want to get better at, but I’m more interested in writing and creating something bigger than songs.
When I was 14 my dad taught me to sing, “Son of a Preacher Man” by Dusty Springfield and “Bobby McGee” by Janis Joplin, songs that any event band can play easily. I’d sit in on his bar gigs and townies and tourists, fishermen and lush ladies with fake tits and tans would tell me I should audition for American Idol. My mom would drive me to the gig and I remember feeling something I couldn’t name yet, that I can now identify as dread. I loved to sing, but the setting wasn’t right. It wasn’t the right kind of attention. I didn’t feel connected. I wasn’t a showman! I was a moody teen and I was misunderstood! If my mom is reading this, she is rolling her eyes. It annoys her when I am so particular about these things, and she thinks I’m being a snob. She would never buy a designer bag.
Don’t get me wrong- I love New England. In 2020 I bought a hand beaded bag from a Copenhagen based designer, Pura Utz, with a big red lobster on it as a nod to my home (ok, maybe I buy more than 1-2 bags every 4 years). Something delicate and fancy. To wear to the ballet or on a date etc. I love seafood, cottages, and the beach. I do not wish to shy away from a New England aesthetic! When my parents moved to Martha’s Vineyard in 1995 it was for hipsters. People in their 20’s could afford to live and work there in the summer. Shabby and rustic by nature, not as a trend. When I was old enough to develop an opinion about the island, the golden age was over. Now the streets are lined with Teslas and nobody I went to high school with can afford housing in their hometown. For lack of a better way to describe it, it’s not cool anymore. When I visit my parents, their friends ask me if I’m going to sing at the bars this time and I politely say no and change the subject. I want to let the real musicians play music. They are better at what they do than me. I’m not being succinct, but guess the point I’m trying to make, at risk of sounding like a snob, is that I’m not a musician. I’m not even a singer/songwiter really. At 27 and 11 months I finally feel courageous enough to say that I am an artist!
Charli XCX is 31 which makes me feel ok about turning 28. When I was a kid I dreamed about being a woman. Now I live alone and have a little money which I can joyfully use to spend on one vintage designer bag every six years or so! I’m writing this from the plane ride home and I am elated at the idea of coming back to a refrigerator that is all mine. I love what Charli said, but I disagree that music isn’t important. Cover bands are important. Events are important. Dancing to music is important. Family is important. American Idol shaped me in middle school, but I am not a vocal gymnast. I love to perform and I love attention, but everything I do ultimately is to feel connected and understood.
My friends in New York are almost all artist-musicians too. Annoying when people brag about their friend groups, I know, but I love my community. Hanging out at a bar after a show is where I feel most at home these days. In our mid-late 20’s were all pursuing something that is, in 2024, ever changing, possibly non existent and we’re not getting any younger. It’s easier to get attention now more than ever, therefore, attention is becoming blasé. We want to tour with artists we respect, we want to sell out shows, we want recognition for what we made. We hope to make enough money to be self sufficient without having side jobs, but that feels like a long shot. Artists, like the heroes we grew up with, don’t exist anymore. I don’t recognize any of the new artists I hear on the radio because they’re not celebrities at all. The image of a successful artist is changing so fast it’s impossible to keep up. I’m not saying I don’t want to be famous, being famous obviously would have it’s perks, but I don’t think that’s why we do it. We’d have to be insane! But then what is the point? We can’t just keep hanging out at Baby’s All Right forever.
I do it because I have to. I make albums to not get depressed. Some of my new music is weirder because I was so sad when I wrote it. I wrote it without worrying about if it would go viral. I wrote it to try to understand my own feelings. To try to say the exact right thing in the exact right way that has never been said before. I wrote it because of what I was listening to and reading and watching. Because I wanted to feel like I was part of the culture I was consuming and because I wanted to have a take on it. I think I am a musician because I was born into a musician family, but this unrelenting need to crunch up the whole world into a shrinky dink and share it comes from something spiritual within me, unbound by circumstance. When I moved to New York I learned about artists. People who talked about process and called it work. People who really looked around and understood the mark they made as part of a bigger story in culture even if it wasn’t commercially successful. I want to make a document of my life. And I do it for the same reason I continue to search for the perfect handbag. It doesn’t matter if the prize is a mirage, it’s about the search for something new.
Anyway. I have a new song coming out April 9th and you can pre-save it here.