Pretending Prada

Hang around kids a while and you’ll hear them playing pretend.

Pretend like I was princess.
Pretend like you were a puppy.
Pretend like we were getting married.

And my personal favorite: Pretend like our parents were dead.

But that’s another story.

After we watched The Devil Wears Prada, my daughter pretended to be Meryl Streep. Where’s my coffee, she said, dumping gloves in my lap. I don’t blame her for playing the devil. She had better bags.

Grown-ups play pretend too. Plastic surgeons help us pretend that our breasts are naturally full and perky, or that our stomachs are flat and smooth. We pretend to like other people’s children. And quiet as it’s kept, most of us, at least once in a while, still want to be a Princess.

Everyone knows a princess needs props.

I swooned over the invitation to a “purse party”. Knock-off Dior and Chloe? Cocktails and couture? Hot. Okay not hot, as in stolen, but as it turns out, just as illegal. I pretended not to know that part.

My friends met me for a cocktail. Or was it two? Anyway - by the time we made it to the party, the dress-up chest was already half empty.

“Hurry up!” they said. “It’s first come first served.”

Louis Vuitton, Channel, and Coach graced the softly lit living room. I handled a red Dolce & Gabanna, and no sooner had I set down than someone else nabbed it.

“If you think you might want it,” a friend whispered, “you need to hold onto it.”

All around me friends and neighbors held multiple bags on their arms.

“Wine?” someone offered.

I accepted and picked up a crocodile Prada. I scoped out black and white Chanels and preppy Kates. I’m not even a label girl. Put me in a room by myself with all those “designer” bags and I’d leave empty handed, but surrounded by the other women, I caved. Good thing they weren’t serving Kool-Aid.

None of it mattered once I was a proud Prada owner.

The next day when I finally sobered up and looked at my plastic bag in the cruel morning light, I felt a shopper’s hangover coming on. Crooked logo, crappy stitching, and chintzy metal rings on the handle. Worst of all some paint was already cracked, soon to expose the tell-tale fraying strings.

That’s how long a $90 game of pretend lasts. Talk about a buzz kill. My Prada was destined for my daughter’s dress-up collection.

I have to make the most of it while it lasted. But the problem was that I feel funny carrying my faux bag. I know from a distance it is supposed to say I’m chic and successful. But what does it say up close?

I’m a fool with a plastic bag and a crooked tin triangle?
I’m insecure and need a fake label to feel important?

And then there’s the problem of compliments. My first impulse is not so gracious.

Thanks. It’s fake.

It defeats the purpose of the game of make-believe. Perhaps I should say instead:

Of course you do, daaahhh-ling. It’s Prada, daaahhh-ling.

Sometimes they persist, wanting to know where I got it, to which I respond:

I bought it on the streets of New York.

Never mind that I’ve never been to New York. Pretend like I have.