This is a follow up to my first blog a few days ago on the subject. As I mentioned, I went through a few magazines, trying to come up with a look for my new heroine in the novella I just began work on. The last time I went to this much effort wardrobing characters was for Gunshot Grange, in which a wedding and wealthy people play large roles. I could be wrong, but I assume that most wealthy, attractive women pay more attention to clothes because they can afford the best. I know when I was briefly attending an upper class school as an adolescent I was supremely conscious of where I shopped even though I'm not a clotheshorse under normal circumstances. Besides, this new heroine works in the movie industry so of course she's style conscious.

All of this leads me to my shocker yesterday when I was out running errands in a small, financially repressed town. I was at a bank and one of the employees was wearing the ring I was going to have my heroine wear at a Los Angeles Halloween party! Granted, the bank employee was a beautiful, stylish woman in her thirties, but she works in a small town! Is the same jewelry going to appeal in small town America and in L.A.? And it was Chanel! Chanel plays in small town America? I was stunned!

Of course, I had to ask. The woman readily admitted all her considerable jewelry was from a company - perhaps a multi-level marketing one from what she said. Despite the fact that some of the jewelry had the double C Chanel logo, she didn't seem to know or care that the ring was featured in a recent major magazine spread and was a Chanel design.

Maybe that's the difference. In Hollywood, surely people know what designer they are wearing and are conscious of what it stands for, while in small town America the women are just looking for pretty jewelry and could care less who designed it. The ring is pretty - it did catch my eye too.

We'll put to the side the issue of knockoffs, which are a huge issue in the fashion industry overall, including billions lost in the marketplace, sweat lodge work conditions for knock-off workers and morality in general...

Another day in the life of a writer!