Étienne Aigner / the Carole Bag

Hungry Hill and the Launch of the Carole Bag (the Short Story) In honor of Hungry Hill's publication, Étienne Aigner is producing a limited edition run of the same handbag Carole eyed wistfully each day as she passed the windows of Casual Corner in the summer of 1962. Etienne Aigner has named it, fittingly, the Carole Bag. mediabistro article about the Carole Bag Boston Herald article about the Carole Bag
Hungry Hill and the Launch of the Carole Bag (the Long Story) It started with a phone call. I stammered to the receptionist at Étienne Aigner that I was trying to find a picture of a handbag I coveted in 1962. After getting patched through to a nameless voice mail in the marketing department, I left a message about wanting a photograph of a vintage handbag. A week or two passed when Julie, the marketing coordinator, called me. I explained that I had written a memoir, Hungry Hill, with a reference to an Étienne Aigner handbag. At Julie's suggestion, I sent her a detailed description of the handbag and tossed in the handbag pages from the book. In the winter of 1962, my father died. A few weeks later, I decided that I would find a job and never ask my slap-happy stepmother for a Dickensian farthing. By summer, I was working about 57 hours a week, a part-time job at a department store and a full-time summer job in county government. Like Silas Marner, I squirreled away my money at a savings bank for college, allotting myself a miserly weekly pittance, the beginning of self-denial. One Thursday night at work, two friends were cruising the downtown department stores and came in, carrying what I would soon learn was an Étienne Aigner handbag. As they rode up the escalator, I took in the brown leather edging of the bag, its brass clasp, and the linen-tweed fabric. Although I was not blessed with the gifted eye that made them "trendsetters," I knew this bag was "it." On my lunch hour the next day, I visited the handbag at Casual Corner where, like the royal jewels, it was on display behind a glass case. Never an aggressive shopper, I admired it as I pretended to study the rack of madras dresses. Paycheck in hand, I headed to my bank and decided on my way back that if the Etienne Aigner handbag cost less than what I made at my part-time job, I would buy it. After work, I returned to Casual Corner and asked the saleswoman how much the bag was. I didn't handle it, didn't ask her to remove it from the case - I needed to know the price. Because I ratcheted $18 dollars and change at my part-time job, I'm guessing the Etienne Aigner handbag cost $19.95. I did not buy the bag and left the store. On the bus ride home, I convinced myself that I didn't need that handbag - that I had to save money for college. Last summer, my youngest daughter, Victoria, asked me to describe the Étienne Aigner handbag in what I thought was a sentimental, mother-daughter fashion moment. I paused in whatever I was doing and launched into a description of it. A few days later, she again asked me if I was certain the handbag had fabric on it. At the time, it seemed an odd question. In a heart-warming conspiracy of three, my daughters, Abby, Susan, and Victoria, had attempted to find the vintage bag on ebay and had even emailed my escalator-riding high school friend for help. But the handbag remained elusive. On a gray, lonely December morning, the marketing coordinator from Étienne Aigner called me and asked hesitantly if I would like to come into their 34th Street showroom and see a collection of vintage handbags she had assembled. I wasn't quite sure I had heard correctly but told her, yes, I'd be there the next day. Julie greeted me in her charmant French accent and led me into a small room where more than a dozen bags preened on a showroom table. The handbag was not there. Had I imagined it all? Embarrassed by my disappointment, I turned to go when Julie handed me a two-inch thick file folder. Sitting down, I flipped through the stack, feeling a tad of disappointment with each picture, and then, there it was. And, yes, after all these years, I still wanted it. Now that we had a photograph of the bag, Julie explained that two employees had vintage handbag collections and she would check with them to see if either of them had the bag. She left to make a copy of the photograph and I was alone with my happiness in that showroom. Trekking to the subway, and only then, was I overcome with what my phone call, my description, my chapter had netted me. The work that Julie had done left me in awe.