Broke-Back Mall: Hear those PURs A-Jinglin'

I confess, I’m a fashion magazine junky. What could be more fun than curling up with glossy spreads of anorexic middle-schoolers wearing lime-green mink jackets over see-through blouses and no underwear?
Well, it used to be fun. A few years back I could convince myself that, with the right concealer, I, too, could wear shades of green that naturally occur only on fish scales and insect wings. So what if my trendy green duds went out of style before I paid off the credit cards used to purchase them?
Then, last summer, something ominous happened: the clothes, shoes, belts and bags in fashion magazines started sprouting zeros.
“Yikes! $35,000 for a handbag?” I shrieked after seeing it listed as a New York working woman’s “must-have” in Vogue. Must be a typo, I thought. $3,500 is a mortgage payment, but $35,000? That’s a brand-new C-Class Mercedes.
It got worse. Over the next year, prices for shoes, belts and bags continued to sprout zeros, raising prices for these items so high that not even the wives of retired Exxon executives could buy them with a straight face.
Not that it’s any of MY business. As if to drive home the point that fashion is no longer accessible to working-class women, a new phenomenon has emerged in magazines like Vogue, Elle, Bazaar, Lucky and Shop: “Price Upon Request.” As of current June issues, “PURs” have proliferated like page lice. Is this what happens when the wealthy one percent get so many tax breaks they have nothing better to do than bait the middle class? Forget the literal translation. “PUR” is code for: “Don’t even think about buying this, you Walmart-shopping untouchable.”
For those who think I’m too sensitive about my socio-economic status, let’s see what Amy Larocca had to say in her article, “Double Your wardrobe” in the February, 2006 issue of Bazaar: “Some women are so resourceful that they split the cost of big-ticket items, devising time-sharing schemes whereby a few friends go in on, say, a handbag and then work out who gets to flaunt it when.”
Yes, I know, there are plenty of other outrages to get worked up about, but while I’m planning a strategy for those, I will go to Neiman Marcus carrying a rolled-up brown paper bag and annoy the sales staff with inane questions about cost. I will shoplift my fashion magazines (get over it). And I will wait for the day when, like SUV owners who have begun torching their gas-guzzlers because they no longer can afford to drive them and can’t resell them, former manufacturers of $35,000 handbags will sit on street corners holding signs that say, “Will accessorize for food.”