Did you know that for just 800 euros you could own a Hermes Birkin bag for a month? OK, OK, technically you wouldn’t own it, just rent it, but who needs to know? The following month you could update to one of those lovely Chloe Paddington bags, just $189, but only for a week this time! And for the following week, what about some Chanel, a nice classic quilt bag, just another $189 for the week, a bargain when you think how much it would cost to actually buy one! Besides, if you wanted to buy one, you’d have to wait. The Birkin bag has a two-year waiting list! Though if you wanted one sooner, you could get one on eBay for just $12,000. Oh the choices a girl needs to make these days!

Has the world gone mad? Are women so lacking in self-worth that they need to spend what would rent you a pretty nice apartment in Jeddah on something that is little more than a label to wear on your shoulder? Are we so fickle? Those bags are beautiful, I don’t deny that. And I’ve even heard it argued that they are more ethical since they are not made by bonded child laborers in poor countries. Though frankly, how much of the 5000 or so euros it takes to buy a Birkin bag directly from Hermes actually goes to the cost of physically making the bag? Most of it is marketing. Besides even luxury goods are sometimes manufactured in countries with cheap skilled labor. It’s often only the design that is still chicly French.

Designer bags were once the preserve of the very rich, but no more. Many women are so keen to have the season’s must-have that they will get into debt in order to buy the handbag they seek. It’s no wonder that some intelligent woman somewhere (OK, maybe it was a man) came up with the idea of renting the bags. People rent tuxedos and evening dresses after all, why not a bag? It is the scale of it all that worries me. A tux or an evening dress is a one-off, a sensible answer to find a suitable outfit for a special occasion without breaking the bank. But designer handbags are not about special occasions but about achieving a certain look, impressing your friends or showing off. They are one hundred percent fashion. Renting them gives you the option of constantly updating your look with the latest trends or of pretending that you are richer than you really are.

But good luck to them, if that is what people want to spend their money on. Great, go ahead. It’s not half as silly as the British women who this week splashed out as much as 80 pounds on eBay to buy a recyclable bag sold at a leading supermarket for 5 pounds. Yes folks, fashion even extends to the humble bag we carry our groceries in. This is not just any carrier bag but a designer limited edition bag! Designed by Anya Hindmarch (no, I’ve never heard of her either, but clearly she must be big with those who know a thing about fashion), it is made of cotton canvas and bears the words: “I Am Not A Plastic Bag”. Sainsbury’s ordered 30,000 of them and sold out almost immediately. Women queued from the early hours at their local stores in order to get this coveted must-have. Amazing what people will do in the name of fashion!

What I find saddest about this is that the bags are now so precious that they are no longer used for what they intended. Instead of encouraging people to use recyclable re-usable bags and ditch the disposable plastic bag, they have become a fashion item too prized to risk dirtying with groceries. And to top it all it turns out they are not quite as environmentally friendly as should be. Yes, wait for it, they are made in China and the cotton may be neither organic nor fair-trade. Oops! So what a good thing it is to see that one little small town in England has done the right thing. It has banned plastic bags. The retailers of Modbury in Devon will no longer distribute free plastic bags but will instead sell reusable or degradable bags to their customers. The statistics on plastic bags are pretty depressing. In the UK alone almost 13 billion plastic bags are given away annually with a good 8 billion ending up in landfills every year. The rest often end up in the sea.

Worldwide 1.2 trillion bags are produced annually. Plastic makes up 90 percent of all rubbish in our seas with up to 100 million tons of plastic debris. This is not just unsightly but kills wildlife: One billion seabirds annually and 100,000 other animals such as dolphins and seals. Clearly, we could, and should, all cut down on our use of plastic bags. Maybe those designer bags aren’t quite so silly after all.