Food, Home and Style

Cashmere Toilet Paper, and Other Ways to Ignore the Recession

If obsessing about unemployment figures, market drops, and inflation rates hasn’t helped improve your financial situation over the past year, it might be time to try something else. Like, say, ignoring the recession entirely and pretending it doesn’t exist.

It’s not hard to do. With the swipe of a credit card and the purchase of a $2,500 Swarovski-embellished handbag, you can be right back where you were before the recession began—deep in debt and surrounded by shiny luxury goods.

Here, a round-up of our favorite ridiculous items and goods that might help take your mind off of the country’s financial crisis, at least until your next credit card statement arrives in the mail.

Cashmere Toilet Paper—It has been a rough recession, but your behind doesn’t need to suffer any longer. The UK supermarket chain Waitrose recently introduced what it calls “the most luxurious bathroom tissue” ever, made from cashmere extracts. At $3.50 for four rolls of paper, it may not be as cheap as the eco-friendly rolls you buy at Costco, but at least it’s a lot cheaper than the cashmere sweater you’ve been eyeing at Saks.

Louis Vuitton’s Trash Bag Purse—What better way is there to pay homage to the worst year of your life than by paying $1,996 for a trash bag? Not literally, of course, but the Louis Vuitton’s Raindrop Besace Trash Bag Purse, which is made of canvas and leather but designed to look like a trash bag. It’s not available until spring, though, which gives you a couple more months to save up.

iVIP Black iPhone App—Return to a time when everyone spent like millionaires no matter how much cash they had on hand by paying $999 for iVIP Black, an iPhone application that acts as a personal concierge service. The company says the app is for “available to high net worth individuals only,” although the number of individuals fitting that description is probably far fewer today than in pre-recession times.

Sugar Factor Couture Lollipops—Nothing says the recession is over like buying a couture lollipop, right? Then again, at $22 per lollipop it might be worth hoping that a candy-induced sugar coma ends up erasing the memory of how much you spent per lick.

The Plaza Hotel’s Presidential Suite—If you’ve been forced out of your home due to foreclosure, then checking in to the Plaza Hotel’s Presidential Suite ought to take your mind off of the situation. Of course, you could put the $20,000-a-night you’d be spending to stay at the hotel toward a down payment on a new house, but that wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

Tags: lifestyle