Currency frenzy has shoppers wrongly mesmerized

Heather Mallick
CBC.ca
November 5, 2007

CBCNews.ca has been spattered with e-mails from readers talking about the spread between the U.S. and Canadian dollars and their stories about crossing the border to get a better deal from the Americans, who are often unco-operative.

I wade into the story with regret. The fact that shopping is, as humourist John Hodgman would put it, one of my Areas of Expertise is pretty embarrassing. On the other hand, there's isn't much call for columns on my other areas, which are Virginia Woolf, the postwar British Labour government, Watergate and the photography of Martin Parr. God, it was nice to e-mail my editor with "Breaking news on Doris Lessing! Can I do it?" but that's a rarity.

My verdict on this dollar frenzy (disastrous for an exporting nation) after a shopping life well-wasted is this: Now is not the time.

I understand why Canadians travel to the U.S. to get a better deal on a car. Cars are real, not notional, and their worth is easy to measure. But I also sympathize with American car dealerships that won't break company rules and sell to Canadians.

It's ironic that doctrinaire free-market Canadians are the ones who most resent market forces when they actually are let loose. The existence of borders, the practice of booking customer orders ahead of time — even in an era of supposedly just-in-time distribution — well, those factors are market forces and sometimes, capitalists lose the game when it's played fairly.

A smart consumer should be trading in and buying a Toyota Yaris, the tiny immaculately made car that can fit a family of five plus groceries and offers great planet-helping fuel economy. (I have never owned anything but Toyotas, so I'm biased.) The basic Yaris costs $15,000, the dressiest $20,000. You will be well-placed as oil prices soar to unheard-of levels in the next few years. Anyone who drove to the U.S. for a deal on an SUV is going to be hauling the thing by hand. Watch that BBC video of the Georgian who dragged an eight-ton helicopter for 26 metres with his ear. That'll be you in 2015.

Border patrols

It isn't pleasant crossing the U.S. border now, not that I'm foolish enough to try it, what with Google and the things I've written about Republicans. Is it worth $1,000 or $2,000 and several blank, dead days visiting Ohio auto dealerships — plus the cavity search and I don't mean dental — to buy something that's available around the corner?

And, you're missing the pleasure of shopping. Men like owning things; women like pursuing them. Shopping soothes my soul. Casting a fishing line or walking into Canadian-owned Holt Renfrew, both give me a feeling of ease and competence. This I know how to do. Trust me, there is no comparable heart's ease in Dress Barn Woman at the Birch Run Prime Outlets mall outside Frankenmuth, "Michigan's Little Bavaria."

The place, which looks like Buckingham Palace but torqued into one storey, boasts of its pet-friendliness and complimentary wheelchairs, which makes you wonder about the type of person who brings their dog for an eight-hour shopping day with only Baconators for food. And if you need a wheelchair, wouldn't you already be in the one you brought with you? And is the Outlets' special "Deer Widows Weekend" what I think it is? Because what I'm thinking isn't nice. What do they sell at Reader's Digest Outlet?

Designer goods versus good goods

It's better to buy good-quality goods, and fewer of them, than loads of tat. But this doesn't mean designer labels, which have poisoned our world. Men's Lacoste shirts say on the label, pathetically: "Made in China. Designed in France." The clothes, all dreary muddy things, are overpriced, but they're overpriced in New York too.

Glamour labels should stick to simple designs beautifully made. But the labels craze has changed this and handbags made on the cheap in the Far East are buckled, chain-mailed, pastel patent leather explosions of oddity.

Things fall apart, even costly things. I only noticed that the metal bit had fallen off a pair of expensive boots when the alarm didn't go off at airport security. Then Gucci stored them for six months and said they couldn't repair them because Italy hadn't called them back.

I can't complain because people who buy designer goods are asking for it. The idea is that the expensive boots don't scream Gucci, they say Gucci in a quiet, cultured voice. But I complained in very soft tones that my boots now had pointed screws sticking out, ripping my coat lining, so they removed them and now my boots have two weird holes.

I know. I deserved it.

There's a scarf I want. It's Balenciaga, a sort of draped scarlet chequered thing with a solid band of colour at the neck, fringes and coin things clanking around… not as ludicrous as it sounds. But it costs $5,600. I'm informed that I can make my own version by buying an underpriced shawl on www.ukrainian-n-things.com, and tying some 25-peseta coins to it from the bowl where the leftover foreign currency sits.

To love the original designer item, I've conveniently overcome my objection to scarves that resemble the krama adopted by the Khmer Rouge, which this one sort of does. To love the home-built approximation requires that I rip off nice Ukrainian-Canadians for something that puts me in mind of pillaging Cossacks. And the whisper will go round the restaurant, "What's that clinking noise? Is she wearing a tablecloth?"

Outer limits

The real problem is that Nicolas Ghesquière of Balenciaga is exploiting not only seamstresses but also customers who are foolish enough to buy a scarf for a quarter the price of a Yaris.

There are limits.

That's the problem with cross-border shopping. There are no limits to the plodding that people endure to get stuff cheap, which rather detracts from the point of foreign travel.

I have a suggestion for unhappy Canadian shoppers, and it's a novel one for me. Don't buy that thing! We are headed for hard economic times. Best to hunker down sans Range Rover and La Perla corsetry. This Christmas, why don't you buy Lesley Stowe's Raincoast Crisps, delicious, Canadian-made and at $6.99 a box, suited to the seasonal pocketbook.

That's all I have to offer you in the approaching recession: toil, tears, crackers and sweat.