September 21, 2005--Throwing Her Weight Around
There I was quietly reading my way through a front page story in the NY Times about how more and more women at elite colleges are saying that they plan to set aside careers to stay at home and raise children (see link below). Always looking for straws in the cultural wind, I was of course thinking about how to blog about this without getting myself into too much political-correctness trouble. My angle was shaping up to be about how this trend was going down with the potential fathers. I planned to quote one Harvard senior, Sarah Currie, who reported that many of the men in her American Family class (they teach this at Harvard?) approved of these plans: “A lot of the guys were like, ‘I think that’s really great.’ One of the guys was like, ‘I think that’s sexy.’”
But then Rona asked if I had read the article about Oprah and the Hermes handbag (link below). Somehow I had missed it, but after even a quick read realized I needed to turn today’s blogging attention to it.
It seems that Oprah and her entourage were in Paris and wanted to shop at the flagship Hermes shop on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoree. But they arrived at closing time and were not allowed in. Oprah being Oprah subsequently brought this to the attention of her huge TV audience, even instituting a “shopping fatwa” against poor Hermes. This was apparently so damaging to the company that the CEO of Hermes USA went on her show to apologize.
Though some saw this incident in racial terms (would Martha for example have been turned away?), Oprah sort of rose above that contending that it wasn’t even about the shopping: It was the rudeness of the salesperson that had stung her. “Anyone who has been snubbed because you were not chic enough, or not thin enough, or not the right class, or the right color, you know that it is totally humiliating.”
Always standing up for the little people.
After the public apology, though she did not give Hermes scarves away to her audience, she lifted the fatwa and urged her fans to buy Hermes Birkin bags—about 5,000 Euros a pop.
But then Rona asked if I had read the article about Oprah and the Hermes handbag (link below). Somehow I had missed it, but after even a quick read realized I needed to turn today’s blogging attention to it.
It seems that Oprah and her entourage were in Paris and wanted to shop at the flagship Hermes shop on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoree. But they arrived at closing time and were not allowed in. Oprah being Oprah subsequently brought this to the attention of her huge TV audience, even instituting a “shopping fatwa” against poor Hermes. This was apparently so damaging to the company that the CEO of Hermes USA went on her show to apologize.
Though some saw this incident in racial terms (would Martha for example have been turned away?), Oprah sort of rose above that contending that it wasn’t even about the shopping: It was the rudeness of the salesperson that had stung her. “Anyone who has been snubbed because you were not chic enough, or not thin enough, or not the right class, or the right color, you know that it is totally humiliating.”
Always standing up for the little people.
After the public apology, though she did not give Hermes scarves away to her audience, she lifted the fatwa and urged her fans to buy Hermes Birkin bags—about 5,000 Euros a pop.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
11:03 AM
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