Boomtown Boudoir

I need a new briefcase for work and I want one of these. Mostly I want this one:

I have a little brown Carlos Falchi bag just like this that I picked up for $45 at a consignment store that I’ve been wearing nonstop ever since. I usually carry both my briefcase and a purse, but this would streamline things down to one sleek black step. $800, though? Not so much.

I really like the little crochet-bag handles on this one, but I’m pretty set on having a briefcase with a shoulder strap. Which would make it, what, more of a satchel?

I fell in love with this guy because it is patently obvious that the person who made it was like “Raawwwrrrr! Look at all this fuckin’ buckskin!” and set upon it with no small measure of mad Daniel Boone-ish glee. Although I doubt Daniel Boone got into stitching things up with their own sinew. Do I mean Davy Crockett? Anyway,  this could be my briefcase. I’m a lecturer at a university. No one is particularly hung up on power dressing there. In fact, sometimes I think that the more I look like a refugee from a Global Crafts Fair, the more seriously I am taken. Quick, someone loan me $400. Maybe my students will think I killed it myself and quake in fear.

This is sort of the lovechild of the sleek wild thoroughbred Carlos Falchi and the rugged sinew-stitched beast-of-burden that is to be henceforth called simply “Davy Crocket.” I could see this being very useful. Most useful, I’m thinking, would be the strap, made from an old belt and adjustable. Also, the dimensions are perfect: 15″x13″x3″.

Yet another Falchi/Crocket lovechild. This one might be a little overdesigned as far as these things go, though. I could live without the antler shed embellishment, and I’m not crazy about the whipstitching on the strap. But if I found it at a thrift store, I’d be all over it and wear it every day.  And looking at the pictures side by side, I might actually like it better than the Davy Crocket. A bit less crude and more feminine, closer to the original idea behind the Falchi bag. Either way, I am beginning to like the more rugged designs better than the Falchi original. There is something really appealing about turning the city into my own private Thunderdome.

OK, so it doesn’t look like someone ripped the leather off the deer with their teeth in order to make this roomy tote bag. Is that really a count against it? Simple, utilitarian, and still luxurious enough to use as a pillow, this one might be it. For $175, I wouldn’t have to significantly alter my existence to afford it, either. My roomate introduced me to the true meaning of  jealousy a few weeks ago by bringing home a consigned $100 Philip Lim purse in black and tan leather, and these colors scratch the same itch. Next to the others, though, it looks a little middle management for the wayI live mylife.  But that might just be next to the others. Should I go for it?

Save my pennies for the Davy Crockett?

Take to sitting on a newspaper box on the corner in nothing but a mink and some stilettos until I pay off the Carlos Falchi?

Sike, I don’t have a mink.