GET YOUR MIRACLE ICONS... AT BARNEYS (?!)

With the holidays here, I get a ton of emails from retailers enticing me to buy the next big thing ---whether it has to do with electronics, entertainment, food, or fashion. In my inbox today, I got a blast from Barneys New York. This e-blast featured some of the season’s “hot” items. Among them I noted a pair of argyle socks, skull caps, jackets, and miracle icon jewelry.

What is “miracle icon jewelry” you ask? Well, from what I saw it looked like a metal-struck pendant of Our Lady of Charity… complete with fake burnishing and “natural”-looking wear-and-tear. If you’re Catholic, then you totally know what I’m talking about. It’s those “miraculous” medals with images of saints, or angels, or Jesus, Mary, or whomever else you can think of. You know – the kind of little metals that you find being sold outside a pilgrimage cathedral in Europe or South America, or even at the gift shop at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in downtown DC. These usually-75-cents-a-piece trinkets are now being sold for $75 at Barneys.

Two thoughts go through my head:

#1 – I don’t like when people wear rosaries or metals with saintly images on them for fashion. I don’t even wear a chain with a cross hanging from it. It’s just not my style. But I guess some people find it chic enough to sport. But how weird is that? For me, I feel like wearing a bracelet with a pendant of St. Bernadette dangling from it would make me feel awkward if I were running around town getting sloshed on the weekends. Maybe it’s my Catholic guilt that makes me think that way (or the time my mom almost beat the crap out of me as a kid because I wore a rosary around my neck as if it were just some random accessory). I shrug.

#2 – Why the hell didn’t I think of selling my old icon-charms to Barneys? And I know I have these lying around my old room somewhere – on door knobs, in drawers, or in boxes. I could’ve made a killing with Barneys selling these under-a-buck pendants for just shy of a Benjamin each.

Well, whatever. If anyone’s interested in sporting the next hot thing in fashion, then I’ve got your miracle icon pendants. Holler for your dollars.

(Ha.)