Kathy Fuld's Recessiony $10,000 'Secret Shopping' Sprees
Fabulously rich people are nothing if not sensitive. Take Kathy Fuld, who still goes on once-a-week $5,000-10,000 shopping sprees at Hermès, but nowadays, so she doesn't offend anyone, she tries to keep quiet about it.
Well, not really quiet, exactly. But these days Fuld, wife of villainous Lehman Brothers CEO Dick, does request a little white bag in which to carry her $2,225 cashmere throws out of the store, rather than the traditional look-at-me orange sacks the store is so known for. How demure! (Or, you know, shameful.) This is a whole new trend, The Daily Beast reports, with rich ladies all over town opting to, oh mercy God yes, still spend the money, but also to be classy about it and not flaunt they shit. It's called "secret shopping"! (And strangely, this report doesn't carry a byline, which means someone at TDB wants to keep their investigation a secret, too.)
"People are feeling guilty and they're feeling confused and they're feeling like they didn't earn their money, especially within the financial community," said somebody from a marketing research house called the Luxury Institute. Aww, sad and confused and guilty, but not sad, confused, or guilty enough to stop spending money. It's like taking the hood ornament off your Mercedes and being proud of yourself.
It's too bad there isn't some way for Kathy Fuld, whose hubby did a really good job of putting many, many people out of work, to like, you know, give back or something. Someone should set up organizations through which people with money, especially folks who don't deserve it, like the Fulds, can give some of that money to people who need it more. Since nothing like that exists though, she'll just have to bury her sad guilty feelings under a mountain of three thousand dollar scarves and white paper bags.