MOLI VIEW™

My plastic python Devi Kroell hobo, a penny under $35 at Target (no, it no longer has that sweeping accent at the end—Target has so succeeded at appearing a harbinger of design to the masses it's almost succeeded in making its name hip), stinks like a new vinyl kitchen floor. And I really want to love that bag. I want to wield it a discount diva. I want to pull my Target Isaac Mizrahi giant bugshades (fake tortoise to go with fake snake) out of it and make a big grand gesture of putting them on as I step into the sun, and I want to pull out a dollar for a cuppa coffee and have that bag be the flashlight beam of the moment. But it smells. The python texture? Yes. It is well done. Whatever mold they used at the factory—in—China?—they got it right. It looks like two python skins ripped right off the snakes, dyed metallic in some giant, poisonous vat and then stitched together in one quick pass by a woman who gave up her daughters. (And actually the color, called "Anthracite" has a strange eco-disaster ring to it.) But see? The stink of it has put me in that mood of you-get-what-you-pay-for. Can we have a few miracles every once in a retail while?

The Libertine for Target tank in charcoal gray with a giant, Edgar Allan Poe-esque bird on it nearly pulls it off. But the cotton is a bit thin. (Smitten with retail adrenaline, I bought it right off the website on Day 1.) A few washings and that will be it. So the idea of a designer doing a masstique collection that is only available for a little while becomes the idea of a designer doing a collection that is, in fact, disposable. And that goes against the idea of good design, which, if disposable, should degrade down like a dried bee on a windowsill until there is nary a trace. Should we remind ourselves of sustainability as we feed our own pleasure principles? The new shiny bag? The image of nature mass produced on a shirt that has a shorter lifespan than many bugs?

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