Getting Carried Away With My Mother’s Fendi Baguette

Like most of the nice things in my mother’s closet, the Fendi baguette was a gift. They hadn’t been dating long, my mother and this latest guy, when he surprised her with the bag over dinner at a French restaurant. My mother floated through our front door, modeling the thing for my brother and me like a home shopping network star. It was the size of an envelope, covered in leopard spots and, she said, made of pony hair. Pony hair, my brain repeated. I ran my stubby fingers over the fur as though I was petting a small horse. It made me feel a bit queasy; at 11 years old, I preferred the cornbread yellow dust bag.

Of the gifts my mother received from her flash-in-the-pan paramours, the Fendi baguette seemed perhaps the least likely to become a family heirloom. It was showy, impractical, and—since we are talking about the early aughts here—it was also extremely trendy. My mother, while uniquely glamorous to me, was no Carrie Bradshaw; most single mothers in Boynton Beach didn’t own It bags. (Fur, especially, doesn’t really make sense in South Florida.) 

So, she tucked it away, along with all the other gifts: the Bulgari necklace that looked like a mezuzah of interlocking gemstones, the Movado watch with its reed-thin black leather band. My mother always coveted fine things, but she didn’t actually know what to do with them; they were too nice for our everyday reality but seemed to signal some fancy existence around the bend. She had the bag, all she needed was the life to match. But when money got tight, as it invariably did, she’d end up pawning off these presents, usually with a bit of a shrug.

A year after my mom got the bag, I first watched what has become my favorite episode of Sex and the City, in which the Fendi baguette plays a starring role. In “Sex in Another City”—the finale of a two-part caper that sees the girls living out bizarro lives in Los Angeles—Samantha buys a convincing gold lamé baguette out of the trunk of an Angelino’s car. 

“No you didn’t,” Carrie shrieks over brunch. 

“That’s, like, $3,000,” Charlotte stammers. 

“Or $150,” Samantha says with a randy smile: “Fake!”