You Can Buy This $68 Designer Pretzel Keychain, If You're Into That
The keychain is part of Kate Spade's new "I Love NY" collection.
"Don't you just love New York in the fall?" These are the immortal words of Meg Ryan in You've Got Mail, a romcom whose sexual politics have aged poorly over the last 23 years but whose determination to romanticize Manhattan has not. Once the autumn colors arrive, New Yorkers' regularly expressed awe for their town reaches a fever pitch, which means that fashion brand Kate Spade's new "I Love NY" capsule collection couldn't have arrived at a better time.
The collection is being rolled out as part of New York Fashion Week, which kicked off Wednesday and goes through the weekend. As Glossy points out, this is the first NYFW open to the public in a post-vaccine world, and its events have been centered on setting an optimistic mood.
"There was a heavy emphasis today on returns and reintroduction and an emphasis on the city of New York itself," writes Danny Parisi. So that could explain the new Kate Spade collection, rife with iconic imagery of big apples, checkerboard taxicab patterns, and, uh, a $68 pretzel keychain. Surprise!
"This pretzel keychain is part of our capsule collection we made to celebrate all the unique things that make our hometown of New York, New York," reads the product description on the company's website. "Clip it to your keys or the handle of your favorite handbag to bring a piece of the big apple wherever you go."
Functionally, it sounds about the same as the keychains you can get from the souvenir vendors along Broadway for about $4 each. But the salt granules on the Kate Spade pretzel do appear to be made of tiny, sparkling crystals, so depending on your level of dedication to NYC iconography, you might opt for the one that'll run you $75 after tax.
I realize that a $68 pretzel keychain might not cause those steeped in the fashion industry to bat an eye. People with money are looking for ways to spend it, after all. But what's strange to me is that anyone with that kind of disposable income would go for a keychain when they could spend just $10 more and get a pair of highly useful, showstopping taxi slippers—or spend $20 less and get these admittedly pretty rad pretzel earrings. But ultimately, nothing beats the I Love NY T-shirt I picked up on a visit in 2004. A classic never goes out of style, right?