Shopping gone scary...

Marie Claire magazine has always been a magazine to tell it like it is; great photography and prose showing us the beautiful side of fashion and city-lifestyle while also never shying away from the darkers sides of the industry.  Finding an article with the tagline "Who knew japan's luxaholics could get any crazier?"...I had to read that story.

It's pretty common knowledge that the young generation in Japan is fashionable....and I mean fashionable. Uuber fashionable. Fashionable to the extremes. They are the definite definition of fashionable. It's completely common to see teenagers and young adults decked out in designer duds from head to toe, no matter what the cost.  (Some quick numbers: 40% of all luxury goods sales are straight from Japan, while around half of Japanese women in their 20's own a Louis Vuitton product...*sigh...lovely LV picture at right.)

This expensive style and obsession with designer labels can turn deadly, as the case with Keiko Onishi, 25 yrs. Oinshi ate nothing but watered-down miso soup for weeks in order to save up cash to buy a limited-edition Gucci bracelet watch. The result; Marie Claire magazine reports on "severe malnutrition and dehydration...the only wrist accessory she wound up with was a saline drip."

(Picture Left: Forever 21, one of MY fave places for cheap fashion...that I don't have to starve myself in order to indulge in...Picture Right: Natalie Portman's shoe line te' cassan...vegan and beautiful and something I would really really be tempted to spend a paycheck on...*double sigh...)

What kind of items are YOU willing to lay down the cash for? What's the most expensive item you've purchased?