Designer shoes, Designer queues

By Yusri B Ithnin

“Ooh..! I LOVE the shoes!!”

That’s the off-the-cuff reply I got recently when I asked my girlfriend what she thought of Sex and the City. Never mind the movie. Cary Bradshaw and her Manolo Blahniks probably have more impact than the storyline ever will. Call it in-your-face product endorsement if you will, but designer wear have caught the imagination of generations of shoppers and movie-goers. How else would you explain the line of schoolgirls and middle-aged aunties in the queue outside a certain designer boutique?

I’m an average guy who likes to look good as much as the next guy does. But I find it utterly ridiculous that people are willing to spend an hour in a queue for the chance to spend thousands of hard-earned dollars on a piece of leather. It borders on obsession. Why else would you join a queue that tells every onlooker that you are too much of a cheapskate to buy the designer item at regular retail price? As an acquaintance of mine used to say, albeit in a snobbish, diva-esque manner, “If you must queue up to buy it, then you certainly can’t afford it.”

So what makes these brands so sought-after? I used to think ‘exclusivity’ is the factor attracting these hordes to designer brands like bees to honey, to be one of the privileged few to lug around a $10,000 designer bag very much like a ‘look-at-me-I-have-arrived’ label. But when your neighborhood kopitiam ah soh is seen clutching a designer bag too, albeit a counterfeit from Petaling Street, it makes me wonder if ‘limited’ has gone ‘mass market’ and ‘exclusive’ has become ‘mainstream’.

Perhaps the queue represents another Hello Kitty phenomenon? Who among us can forget the crazy queues at McDonald outlets some years ago when obsessive bandwagon-jumpers were seen dumping burgers like discarded sweet wrappers as soon as they lay their hands on the Hello Kitty dolls, obliviously ecstatic in the mistaken belief those dolls will appreciate in value in the near future. Now I do not have firsthand knowledge as to what happened to those ‘investments’ but I do know the only one laughing his way to the bank looks suspiciously like Ronald McDonald.

The ‘designer’ queue is no laughing matter. Not to the ones who are party to it. But onlookers may find it hard not to chuckle, even snicker. Some, like the few men in the queue, sport that “don’t-look-at-me, my-wife/girlfriend/mother-in-law -made-me-do-this” look. Others probably just want the bragging rights to making ‘the deal of the century’ and turn their mahjong kakis green with designer-hued envy. Frankly, I can’t tell the obsessive ones apart; they all seem nuts to me.

Many women think a typical guy like me do not understand the psyche behind designer wear shopping. They are right: I don’t. Otherwise, FJ Benjamin would have hired me. But I do see a male equivalent in the snaking queues at Funan Centre whenever techies and geeks converge for newly launched products or popular online games like World of Warcraft. These queues were however driven by the desire to adopt new technology rather than a need to satisfy some narcissistic vanity. I won’t discount the desire for bragging rights, though. Geeks can get obsessive over hardware specifications, even over intangible bytes and pixels. I should know. I used to be one of them.

Which graphics card will best match this motherboard? Which designer bag goes with this designer outfit? See the similarities, ladies? Men are not from Mars after all. But here’s where the similarity ends. Our $800 top-of-the-range graphics card sits proudly within the CPU casing, protected by a host of cooling devices and surge protectors. Your Manolo Blahniks costs as much if not more. But when nature calls, would you sashay your way to a public toilet in your Blahniks or would you rather hold your bladder till you can find a more agreeable, designer shoe-friendly environment? I don’t know about you but that is a decision I’d rather not have to agonize over. Not when I just had a couple of drinks.