2012-11-21 - 11:33 a.m.

certain values of everyone

last week, i took all my favorite shoes to be re-soled. looking at the shop reviews on yelp, i was bemused by an oddly pervasive apologetic tone. "i know it seems extravagant to spend $$ on shoe repair, but i really loved these shoes and so..."

well now. isn't it categorically more wasteful to discard a pair of shoes than it is to fix them? but i think i get it. by taking your shoes to be repaired, you are saying that your shoes are sufficiently valuable to merit repairs, and that's uncomfortably close to bragging.

there's a different dialect here, with these always-remember-to's and nice-people-don't's, an unfamiliar nuance to buy-the-best-you-can-and-use-it-as-long-as-you-can. the best-you-can can't be markedly better than - or different from - anyone else's. you can have your lily, and your vera bradley, and your sperry topsiders, and your brooks bros., and your lululemon. you can buy anything you like at target. but prada - say - is bragging.

nice-people-don't do consumerism. it is okay to have collections. some people conflate the two, but everyone can see who's wearing their mother's lily and who's binged on all this latest season's patterns. well, "for certain values of everyone," as my particular friend likes to say.

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