*Above photo courtesy of my virtual BFF who’s living my other life in KL

A dear reader recently wrote about her first Chanel bag and the whole charming experience behind buying it. She also asked me which was the first one that led me down this, shall we say, dark road of no returns. For me, it was the chocolate brown on brown Cambon mini reporter with orange lining. Let’s roll back a few years…now I’d been a huge fan of Chanel for a very long time, but mostly for their shoes and clothes. Always thought their classic bags were too matronly for the (Italian) rocker girl living inside my head.

Then one day I saw a picture of the real Italian-American rocker girl living outside of my head, aka Madonna, running around London carrying the large reporter in black. Don’t let me fool you, celeb advertising, whether intentional or random by paparazzi shots, works. I don’t really want to buy anything simply because a celeb is wearing it (it actually has the opposite effect for me) but put Nicole Ritchie in it and suddenly I think I can’t live without it. Maybe it’s because we’re both tiny and if she can rock something, I think it might work for me. But anyway, back to Madonna and that bag. The thing is, I’m a fan of Madonna only because her music reminds me of some interesting moments in my life and because she’s a heck of a businesswoman. What she wears, on the other hand, while I applaud will definitely not work on me because we do not have the same body type…thus, if you use her in your ad campaign, it most likely will not work on me.

And yet that one tiny picture sealed my fate. I researched the bag as if I was looking for a cure for cancer. I debated among the various permutations of the bag and eventually came home with this one and its matching phone case, which BTW never fit any of the million cell phones I’ve had since then:

If you are a fan of this label like yours truly, you know that part of the thrill is deciding which ones catch your eye for that season then scouring the boutiques (as I call it doing my homework) until you find the right one. The high, of course, is the day you finally decide to get it from the store. And if you buy it from the boutique itself instead of the department store, the biggest treat is in their wrapping then your unwrapping when you are back in the privacy of your own home…

where you could squeal and jump up and down on the sofa to your heart’s content. And yeah, it never gets old to me. At least not yet.

My first Chanel bag has since long been adopted. My collection has also morphed into a group of the aforementioned “matronly” bags. But boy oh boy, there’s nothing dowdy about them now…

They still rock in and out of my head.