Bags for people with bags more money than sense

If western civilisation were to fall tomorrow as a result of the kind of meteor attack that supposedly killed the dinosaurs, future archaeologists would discover a landscape littered with almost indestructible It Bags. It is the received wisdom handed down from my mother that a good handbag makes the outfit but there is "good" and there is Burberry's new £13,000 gold alligator bag, which is not even the most expensive currently available. You could, for example, spend $55,000 (£28,000) on an Hermes crocodile bag, the clasp of which is encrusted in diamonds.

As designer fakes proliferate, handbag makers have aggressively put up their prices. One day last year at the stroke of noon, Chanel put up the prices of all its bags by 20%. The purchase of bags far beyond the income of the average woman has become a frenzy running parallel with the rise of Primark, for there is no fashion for cheap, disposable bags. Instead, there are vastly expensive disposable bags. Twenty-year-olds on £14,000 a year are going into credit card debt to buy £1,000 bags they have seen on the arm of Victoria Beckham or Keira Knightley, who did not, of course, pay for them. These bags will be hopelessly out of date by the end of the season.

Even a decade ago, a woman bought a bag and carried it until it looked shabby, or she bought one of the lifetime classics such as the Chanel quilted 2.55. No one cared about bags and there were none on the catwalks. The luxury accessories market is now financing high fashion; couture can only exist because enough women are prepared to buy an Yves St Laurent Tribute bag. You don't need to be a size zero to carry exactly the same bag as Kate Moss, you do not have to despair because Burberry is out of your size. Shops love them for the same reason - they take up less space in the stock room.

The handbag announces your status: if you carry an Hermès Birkin it is because you have endured its legendary three-year waiting list. It all feels like 17th-century tulip fever: 2008 will, mark my words, be the year of the $100,000 handbag.