The big Christmas to New Year’s holiday season is barely over and marketing has already shifted gears to focus on the next big date: Feb 14. Of course, this year that’s both Valentine’s Day and also the first day of the lunar new year, so it’s big.
Today at 10pm, after an entire day of almost no food, I speed-walked a good mile to the nearest not-so-nearby McDonald’s and ordered a Mega Prosperity Burger upsized meal (and various other things, but we can leave that aside for now). It’s a giant, double-beef-patty long sandwich with black pepper sauce and fresh onions, but that’s not the point. The point is that it’s a Chinese/Lunar New Year offering that’s been launched even as Starbucks is still serving special holiday treats and I saw maintenance workers just starting to take down the boughs of faux holly in the mall.
And then yesterday I bought my first Louis Vuitton trinket of 2010, an adorable and probably utterly impractical coin purse/clutch shaped like a chicken!! It’s part of the new Animaux collection that’s apparently meant to commemorate Valentine’s Day… and the collection was launched worldwide on 1 Jan 2010.

Source: ilvoelv.com
Isn’t it fantastic?? I *heart* hens! Actually, there’s a more attractive “songbird” version in a lovely blue colour, but I had to get the chicken… of course!! The LV website hilariously tries to justify this piece of frivolousness (after all, it’s based on toy animals that the Vuitton family used to make, supposedly) based on it’s practicality. First of all, it’s called a “Bird Clutch”, as if it has any possibility of serving as an evening clutch bag – this is an item that would be hard pressed to hold a box of tic tacs, no joke…
From the LV website:
Inspired by the wooden toys from the 1950s found in our archives, the Bird Clutch is a playful design in glossy Monogram Vernis leather. A delightful gift idea as either a coin purse or a bag charm.
Size: 4.9″ x 4.5″ x 0.4″
-Large capacity for coins
-Room for several credit cards
-Golden brass chain to hook the coin purse to a D-ring
-Foam under patent leather for extra softness
PRODUCT ID: M91406
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Let me state for the record that I just tried, and not even one single standard sized credit card will fit in this “clutch”… but I still love it! And I guess many other people agree with me, because the hen is already out of stock online (on Jan 3), while the songbird is still available.
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In the past three days I’ve just about finished three books, so we’re off to a good start, at least. And in three totally different genres too – a light-hearted breezy read about the world of fashion by a fashion journalist (The Meaning of Sunglasses), a pensive/sombre novella by Kazuo Ishiguro (A Pale View of Hills), and hopefully tonight I will wrap on the thoughtful critique of Harvard by former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 (Excellence Without a Soul).
Reading the latter has really made me yearn anew for years past. Or perhaps it’s just the comfortably fuzzy embrace of rosy nostalgia.