A colleague at a TV station I work for, fell at my feet today, praising and stroking my shoes. Where, oh where ever did I get if from and how much was it? “Well, converted from the czech crowns, it would be just about 4 quid.” Her jaw dropped and hit the floor: “If that’s how much they sell Converse for in the Eastern Europe, I am sitting on a plane tomorrow!” Yeah, but tis not Converse shoes, love, although you would hardly tell the difference.

Her enthusiasm shivered and faded away like a blown out candle. She was ashamed, for liking the shoes even though it costs under 90 pounds, made by a guy whose name she wouldn’t be able to pronounce properly even after the ten intensive lessons of Vietnamise.

Needs to be said, that here in London, she is the proverbial exception that proves the rule. No one gives a toss about the brands. But she comes from a little village on the south of France with (literally) fifteen houses and a well, and she still suffers from that bumpkin syndrome of idolizing the fashion brands, believing that the more you pay, the better quality clothes you get.

No one told her yet that Armani has his pieces tailored in the very same shabby factory in China by the very same underweight Chinese (kids?) who tailors for the H&M, hence she is not buying an illusion of the high-class lifestyle, but only contributing to the better lifestyle of Giorgio Armani, who..sipping on cocktails at his yacht sailing near the New Zeland’s shore.. shoves her hard-earned £20 bank-notes into the g-strings of the thouroughly oiled eighteen years old italian hunks.

And he laughs deviously too, cause the world is full of bumpkins.