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Tiffany, as I'm sure countless parents will argue, is different. It sounds so mellifluous, so venerable, so upper-crust American. In the early 1960s, a pretty junior high classmate of mine served as a harbinger of the future by answering to Tiffany. Her we-should-have-seen-it-coming destiny: a brief career as a braless starlet on a now forgotten TV sitcom. To think that it all began with Charles Lewis Tiffany, who became famous in the 1850s by peddling Marie Antoinette's jewelry. But the true bard of bijou will always remain Truman Capote, who begat Holly Golightly (now that was a name) and her unorthodox notions of a morning repast. The 1961 movie version of Breakfast at Tiffany's was a seminal part of my childhood too. Small wonder as a married man, I have succumbed to the lure of shopping Tiffany money clips. I know the manly power that comes presenting a birthday gift encased in that trademark robin's-egg-blue Tiffany box. The jewelry itself is almost beside the point; the symbolism is all in the blue box that proclaims. "I shop with the wealthy. I can afford to pay retail." The issue is not the aesthetic merit of Tiffany jewelry but my parvenu pretensions in giving it. I was confronted with my folly a few years ago, while interviewing a marketing guru. "When you make a large purchase," he theorized, "there is a simple formula everyone follows--risk reduction," His prime example, reading me perfectly, was the earrings in the little blue Tiffany box, which he called "an expensive sign of riskless excellence." Return to Tiffany Post a comment in response: |
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