It's a slippery slope to becoming a bag lady
by Beth Teitell

Wednesday, September 5, 2001

I have a shopping problem. Actually, to be more precise, it's a shopping bag problem.

I can't throw them away. My house is like a roach motel, only for bags. They come in, but they don't go out.

The kitchen drawer that used to house the collection so comfortably no longer closes all the way, even when you put all your weight into the effort. Even when you curse.

Less than a year in our current apartment, and the bags have started to encroach on the cabinet where we keep Tupperware and random china.

``It's just temporary,'' I told myself a few weeks ago, shoving in a Trader Joe's bag. But I knew I was lying. The next day I was back, squirreling away a neatly folded Filene's Basement bag and a spacious Marshall's bag, which, to be honest, had suffered a little damage on the way home from the store.

``But,'' I said to no one in particular, ``you never know when you might need to carry something large.''

I may be going crazy, but the other day I swear I overheard the bags talking among themselves. They're eyeing the space above the refrigerator. ``If she gets rid of the wine rack, we can all live there together,'' Lord & Taylor told Ann Taylor.

I hate to play the victim, but some of the blame belongs to the bags themselves. They're too good-looking to toss: The plaid Burberry beauty. The Thomas Pink with the distinguished rope handles. The Tiffany, dressed in its signature blue. The Chanel, with its sleek black body and white lettering.

The glossy white Lily Pulitzer bag is more tasteful than Lily's clothes are. I don't really like her Palm Beachy skirts, or the bags she sells, but I've never been more jealous than I was the other day, when I saw a young woman sashaying down Newbury Street, a Lily shopping bag cradled in the crook of her arm. She was Nantucket!

I want one of those bags, I thought. I want to walk into a boutique and be treated the way a person carrying a Neiman Marcus or a Kenneth Cole or an Armani bag is treated: like someone with money to burn.

In this regard, the bags are better than the clothes or the shoes themselves. Those get dirty, or may not be noticed. But worn right, there's nothing subtle about a bag.

``I'd display them in my house like they were vases - if it weren't too tacky,'' a friend said.

She knows all the tricks of the trade: how you buy the cheapest item in the store and ask for a bag (heh, heh, heh); how you buy something large and expensive and then - here's the beauty part - return it and keep the bag; how you go into a dry cleaner or a tailor in a nice neighborhood and ask if they have a shopping bag you can have, and then select a prestige bag.

But scoring more bags - even the coveted Marc Jacobs bag - is the last thing I need.

Like a woman with expensive jewels who only wears replicas when she goes out, I never dip into my collection. Why waste a DKNY bag, or a Winnie the Pooh, or a Gap, on a lousy tuna fish sandwich or a pair of shoes headed for the cobbler?

No, when I need to use a bag, I'll take a plastic one instead.

I guess I could do something noble, like recycle my bags. Or, maybe I could donate them, become a philanthropist. Doing research for this column, I came across the Newark Public Library's Web site. People like to make fun of New Jersey, but it turns out the library has one of the biggest shopping bag collections in the country, if not the world.

Charles Cummings, the museum's assistant director for special collections, told me that a rich lady arrives once a year in her limo to drop off shopping bags.

``Do you think you might take some of mine?'' I asked.

Why yes, he thought they might.

``Would you like a Marshall's bag?'' I asked.

He paused. ``Uh, maybe not.''

I should have been insulted, but to be honest, I'm not sure I would have been able to part with it anyway.