Controversies

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Is Macy's making a snap judgment about the clientele buying Michael Kors bags in certain stores? Gina Bellefante noticed that the designer's mid-priced bags are the accessory around "less precious quarters of Brooklyn or the Bronx," and their corresponding department stores have taken to locking up the product. "The purses themselves signal the country club and luncheon life; their display, bound together by wire, suggests the fears and prejudices of the elites whose lifestyles the products encode." [NYT]