Olympia Le-Tan: I love books, BUT...

... I'm not sure I would spend over a 1000 euros to carry one around. Do you think these qualify as the literary equivalent of fake geek glasses? As in: style trumping function and fetishing an intellectual image?

They are pretty, though. I hope whoever buys these gets a free copy of the book as well. And, you know, reads it. Crafted by Olympia Le-Tan, available at Net-a-Porter.

Olga's Retro

Should you ever fall prey to an uncontrollable desire of crocodile leather (surely one of life's more offbeat but underestimated hazards), there is always the option of visiting Olga's Retro in Gent.

In fact, you should go even if you don't have a particular longing for reptile skin, if only because there never was a true Gantoise like Olga. She represents everything I associate with characteristic Gent personalities: stern at first sight, but with a heart of gold, and quite a mouth on them. It's hard not to like Olga - she's a firecracker. On top of that, vintage clothing really is her passion. She opened the store when she was 58. Takes some guts, right?

The shop is tiny, but well stocked. There's an array of clothing, but Olga focuses on purses, shoes and coats. She has a steady supply of high quality leather goods, and I have to say, we found some magnificent purses during our hunt. Among them was a beautiful and impeccable crocodile bag for - if I remember this well - 500 euros. A small fortune, yes, but not compared to the thousands and thousands of euros you'll pay for a new one.

You'll find a lot of vintage brands here (Delvaux especially). Olga told us some purses are sold within a few hours of their arrival, so if you've really got your mind set on something, I would check back from time to time. And if you're worried about overspending, Olga will no doubt mollify your mind:

Cliché Tuesday: Handmade clothing is crazy expensive

Do you think you can't afford handmade clothing? Think again! It's not as expensive as you might expect. Usually, when thinking of handmade clothing, the first thing that springs to mind is haute couture. Experienced French seamstresses meticulately beading hundreds of pearls onto exquisite but alas unaffordable dresses. Fountains of delicate fabric. Intricate woven patterns. Razor sharp cuts.

Inspiring. Captivating. Titillating. Quite out of reach. And yet surprisingly, garments made by hand (partly, at least), aren't necessarily a danger to your wallet. In fact, I'm willing to stake my left pinky toe - who needs those anyway? - on each and every one of you having something made by hand in your closets. Unless you're not into sequins, embroidery and that kind of stuff, in which case I'll keep my toe, thank you very much.

Fact of the matter is, handmade clothes are not out of reach to us. It is true that most of the clothes we buy nowadays are sewn using sewing machines. Machines, however, cannot solve everything: some embellishments are too delicate, or would require highly sophisticated machinery, to be sewn on automatically. It's hard to know, but at the prices we usually pay for our clothes, we can safely assume that the factories producing them do not have the means to purchase this technology. Chances are I'm sharing old news, but I still wanted to write about it. Because weirdly enough, I had never ever considered how the sequins in my clothes came to be where they are, and I certainly didn't expect them to be the product of handicraft.

These are all details of clothes of mine. To produce something like this requires craftship, determination and precision. I marvel at whoever did this. Especially considering she (or he) is very likely one of the 30 million informal home-workers employed by the fashion industry who work in poor conditions and, according to the Self Employed Women's Association, do not even come near to earning minimum wage. Which I'm guessing is pretty low to start with in a country like India...