Beat Your Designer Bag Addiction!

Following on from our last post Designer Bags and Organic Fashion, which covered the ecological issues surrounding the production and sale of designer bags, here we'll take a tongue-in-cheek look at ten ways in which you can beat your designer bag addiction... if you want to, of course!

This is for you if you simply cannot open your closet because it is so full of your designer handbags - to simply turn the knob, a tsunami wave of designer bags and purses cascade out and create pandemonium in your bedroom into a mess! Well, maybe you need some help. If you are trying like mad, but unsuccessfully to curb your designer bag addiction, here is the definitive method to help you beat your designer bag addiction in 10 steps.

Beat Your Designer Bag Addiction!

1. Unlike many self-help programs, you don’t want to go cold turkey and stop buying designer bags altogether. If you are addicted to designer bags it won’t work. The first step then, is to realize that you cannot stop your addiction suddenly.

2. Make a budget for yourself. You are not just going to make a budget for your designer bags by the way, listing exactly how many Louis Vuittons you can buy versus Tote bags. You will make a budget for everything in your life including rent, utility bills and car insurance, etc. It's a drag, but a necessary one.

3. With your budget in hand, you are going to limit how many designer bags you will purchase. So, of you only have an extra $200 in your budget and the Louis Vuitton handbag costs about $800, you will have to swallow the fact that you can only afford to buy one every four months. That means NOT buying the blue leather designer bag and the black Gucci bag at the same time!

4. If you are having willpower problem over not buying a designer bag, watch out for that tempting rash purchase. Maybe 20 years ago you'd just put the money in the bank, which would have put a stop to you buying a designer bag on the spot. But with shopping online, ATMs and credit cards, you are going to need to literally freeze your plastic. This is cool... Get a plastic container, fill it with water, put your credit cards in it, and pop it in the freezer. Now if you want to purchase that latest Fendi designer bag, you're gonna have to wait for the money to thaw.

5. Avoid temptations. Throw away the tabloids or just don't buy them to avoid seeing ads for designer bags. It seems that every week a new celebrity is carrying around a different designer bag. While it's nice to see who has the same bag that you want, it's just too tempting.

6. If you're feeling a little depressed about not having the latest designer bag, re-organize your own collection. Even if you only have a small collection of designer bags you can spend the time that you'd spend shopping doing some work on them.

7. If you are weary of carrying around the same designer bag, why not take some of your older bags out of retirement. While they may have been popular a few years ago, good designer bags never go out of fashion - they ARE fashion!

8. To get a new designer bag into your wardrobe, why not trade with a friend or better still, borrow one. If you don't know anyone you could do that with, check this out:



Borrow the Biggest Brands in Designer Handbags at BagBorrowOrSteal.Com!

It won’t cost you a lot of money, and no one has to know it’s not yours.

9. Designer bags are expensive items to collect, so you may want to start a different collection. Why not try stamp collecting? Stamps are cheap so you could buy hundreds of them for the price of one designer bag. On the other hand, forget that one...

10. If it's really too tough to beat your designer bag addiction, to relieve the stress you may just want go ahead and buy a nice Burberry. You’ll be truly disappointed in yourself, hate yourself even for succumbing to that temptation... but hey, at least you'll have the satisfaction of carrying around the latest Burberry designer bag!

If that doesn't inspire you to give up your designer bag addiction, then don't! Go out and treat yourself to a new designer bag instead - a little retail therapy never hurt anyone!

My Designer Bag

Designer Bags and Organic Fashion

Following on from the last full post (bypassing the Christmas message, of course) which was all about Designer Bag Fakes, now we'll move on to a mention about something more unusual in the world of designer bags, merchandise from Organic and Eco Fashion sources.

Organic fashion

Organic fashion refers to clothes or designer bags etc which have been produced with a minimum of chemicals and thereby damage to the environment. That includes chemicals used in every step in the process. From the growing of cotton, to dying and finishing the fabric.

Eco fashion

Eco fashion means clothing which has been manufactured with environmentally-friendly processes. These include organic clothing. Eco fashion clothing and designer bags for example can use recycledmaterials such as eco-fleece which is produced from recycled plastic drinks bottles. Eco fashion, by the way is not necessarily made from organic fibres.

Why Would You Support Organic and Eco Fashion?

The fashion industry has an huge impact on the environment. A large percentage of the clothes we wear these days are made from synthetic materials. Nylon and polyester are produced from petrochemicals which pollute the environment and cause global warming. They are also non-biodegradable. That means they don't naturally break down easily which makes them difficult to dispose of. During the manufacture nylon, nitrous oxide is released and this is a greenhouse gas that is 310 times stronger than carbon dioxide.

Viscose, another artificial fibre, is made from wood pulp which is treated with toxic chemicals such as caustic soda and sulphuric acid. Nice!

Natural fibres do have their problems, too. Cotton growers use more pesticide per cotton plant than almost any other crop worldwide. This creates serious impacts, causing illness and even death amongst cotton farmers who are exposed to them every day. I'd like to say it serves them fucking right. These pesticides also affect local eco-systems and kill certain plants and animals causing an imbalance in nature. Chemicals used in the growing of cotton remain in the fabric and are released during the lifetime of the garments. They affect the people who wear the clothes too.

Hazardous chemicals are also used on wool. For example sheep dips have been linked with illness amongst sheep farmers.

If that wasn't enough, certain dyes are believed to cause cancer. In many countries, garments are dyed or bleached using toxic chemicals without proper precautions. These chemicals can then affect workers. They also flow into sewers and rivers, damaging the local ecosystems.

Virtually all polycotton (especially bedlinen), as well as "easy care", "crease resistant" and "permanent press" cotton are treated with formaldehyde, another toxic chemical.

About Organic and Eco-Friendly Fabrics and Dyes

Organic cotton


Organic cotton is grown without using poisonous chemical pesticides and insecticides. Apart from damaging health and the environment the common sense part of this is that these are also very expensive for farmers. Nothing like money to make something attractive, so if these chemicals are cut out of the process, everybody gains.

Organic cotton garments are also mostly free from chlorine bleaches and synthetic dyes.

Hemp

Hemp is an eco-friendly crop. It needs few or no agri-chemicals to grow successfully and at the same time it binds, improves and enriches the soil with its deep roots.

Linen

Linen, which is made from flax (another traditional fibre crop) also needs fewer chemical fertilisers and less pesticide than cotton.

Organic wool

Organic wool is increasingly being made available. It is produced using sustainable farming practices and without those toxic sheep dips.

Natural dyes

Natural dyes are made from common plants, vegetables and roots. A wide variety of colour-fast pigments can be created in this way.

So think about what you buy when you think about fashion and designer bags. There are alternatives to the earth killing processes that we have grown unhealthily accustomed to. In fact there is a great environmentally aware online store that is worthwhile looking at to get some great alternative designer bag ideas and that's LittleEarth. Here's a link to one of their special offers:

Wear a Work of Art, Buy a Designer K. Lianna for Littlearth Purse

Try it our for yourself, or see the banner in the sidebar.



My Designer Bag