After shelling out a decent amount for my new and necessary python bag, I put myself on a shopping embargo. This is quota-necessitated -- no space in the closet for clothes, or shoes, or bags. And then I went and bought a pair of shoes "in order to get free parking" (Parking money saved: HK$24. Shoe money spent: $599.) They didn't have my size so I have to pick them up later this week. So therefore, I forgot that I had broken the ban already, and broke it again, this time while harmlessly (or so I thought) waiting to cross the street after work. ("Why did hkShoeGeek not cross the road?" I'm a bad joke waiting to happen.) Light showed red man standing. So I stood. But only for a moment, because right in front of the crosswalk, beckoning to me in from the window, Confessions of a Shopaholic-style, was a steal of a slip of a dress, the neon pittance of a price tag seducing me into submission. I was on the phone at the time, so I walked into the store, pointed to the dress, skimmed quickly through the racks, paid, and left, all before the light had changed or the person on the other line knew what I was doing, all without uttering a single word to the saleslady, too. It felt great. It felt indulgent. It felt sordid. At least the dress matches the shoes. But now, I'm on an offical ban. If you spot a crazy-eyed Chinese girl in a red-and-fuschia dress with python bag, plastered to the window display of Lane Crawford like a Disney toy in a car window with suction cups on its limbs, do me a favour -- pry me off, help me up, and at no point allow me to enter the store.

However, expect crankiness caused by unsatisfied clothing cravings (especially in the mornings, when I look in my overstuffed closet and mourn: "I have nothing to wear!"); increased appetite; restlessness and directionlessness... basically all the symptoms of someone who's quitting smoking. In the meantime, allow me to share with you beautiful things that are so ridiculously out of my budget that it doesn't matter that I'm looking at them. I'm a bargain hunter at heart, after all.

Statement jewellery I cannot afford:

Marni is in a category of its own. Marches to its own quirky beat and yet so ridiculously covetable. Who woulda thought a couple of moulded acylic flowers could create such a frenzy in my heart?





The cage necklace. By YSL, of course. I've seen sixteen different high street knockoffs of the shoes, why isn't someone doing the bling too?



It's a cuff, it's snakey, it's gold. It fulfills all my wishes and deserves to go in the pantheon of classic accessories. By Kara Ross, that purveyor of to-die-for snakey clutches.



Copper has been very soothing to me lately, the antidote to an overdose of gold. I don't own any yet, but I will. Missoni has never been on my radar, but after last season's reworking of the Missoni prints in subtler interpretations (much like Dundas did for Pucci this fall), I'm a believer.



Images: Browns Fashion