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Coffee Break: Kira Convertible Shoulder Bag

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Tory Burch small Kira diamond quilted convertible leather shoulder bag in color "rose salt"

Tory Burch's Kira convertible shoulder bag gets glowing reviews, and I love this pretty pale pink for spring. It isn't a huge bag, but it isn't one of those teensy ones either — Nordstrom shows that it can fit an iPhone, small wallet/card case, claw clip, car keys, two lipsticks, and a pen.

The bag is $548 at Nordstrom, and it also comes in black, white, and “fresh pear” with this wider diamond quilted pattern; if you like a tighter chevron they also have that in black and several beiges.

Sales of note for 3/15/25:

  • Nordstrom – Spring sale, up to 50% off
  • Ann Taylor – 40% off everything + free shipping
  • Banana Republic Factory – 40% off everything + extra 20% off
  • Eloquii – 50% off select styles + extra 50% off sale
  • J.Crew – Extra 30% off women's styles + spring break styles on sale
  • J.Crew Factory – 40% off everything + extra 20% off 3 styles + 50% off clearance
  • M.M.LaFleur – Friends and family sale, 20% off with code; use code CORPORETTE15 for 15% off
  • Spanx – Lots of workwear on sale, some up to 70% off
  • Talbots – 40% off 1 item + 30% off everything else (includes markdowns, already 25% off)

84 Comments

  1. Is eberjay still the standard of great pajamas? Mine are looking sad and I’d like to restock but I’m wondering if there’s another brand I should check out. I like the nordstrom brand but I find it looks ratty more quickly than the eberjay brand. Thanks!

    1. TBH, I still love Victoria’s Secret pajamas, along with their underwear and bras.

  2. I follow a particular lifestyle blogger who shall not be named. She is a truly talented writer about life—marriage, motherhood, friendship, the passage of time—and that’s why I follow her. But her consumerism is absolutely shocking to me. Based on her weekly hauls, she’s spending thousands in a day without thinking twice—$600 dresses, $800 bags, “affordable” items she posts are $250, etc.!

    It got me thinking about how this woman, and many other lifestyle bloggers I find myself following, grew up in a certain way. Based on her writing, she was clearly born into a wealthy family and socialized to meet and marry a man who could provide an income similar to her father’s. Now she is married to a high-earning husband and works as a blogger who writes essays and posts tons of affiliate links, and she continues to maintain the same very expensive standard of living she grew up with.

    I found myself wondering what income her blog actually produces and whether or not that even matters. If you have a husband or parents who can guarantee you a trust or a monthly income or a down payment on a house or WHATEVER it is, you can use your blog earnings as “free money” for dresses or vacations.

    The dollar amounts just don’t add up. What she is spending is so much more than anything she could earn with the blog (at least, I think so!?) that the money must come from elsewhere. But it’s all so unspoken and invisible. It’s so obvious to me why so many people are influenced by this kind of lifestyle. Her lifestyle is beautiful! But there is clearly family money there supporting it, and so many others are going to see this lifestyle and think they, too, could afford it if only they blogged often enough or something…

    1. I don’t know who you’re referring to but the OG bloggers made a LOT of money. I think it was reported that Cup of Jo earns millions a year (her Brooklyn townhome was certainly $3-4MM if not more).

      1. Oh, it’s no one big like Cup of Jo. Just a random small blog I follow. I agree that Cup of Jo probably earns a lot! But I don’t find her particularly consumerist and she really keeps the shopping posts to a minimum. She is one of the OGs that found the right balance and stuck with it—and her devoted audience really shows that. Love her.

          3. The lifestyle reminds me of Elle Fowler, but it’s not her because she’s a Youtuber not blogger, and I don’t think she would be so out of touch to post a $250 item as affordable. She’s very privileged but also somewhat aware I would say.

      2. And, much like an MLM & other pyramid schemes, downstream bloggers make little to no money. Negative money if you count all the spending that goes into creating aspirational content.

    2. Is she getting some of the stuff for free maybe?

      I know the job of blogger and influencer is to sell things, but I do find myself getting so turned off by it.

      1. Maybe, but I don’t think so. She mentions specifically when she is sent something. Most of it she just buys!

        The content is jarring and at odds with her thoughtful musings about life. I guess both can exist in the same space and always have (see: women’s magazines) but in this format especially I find it so jarring!

        1. I read an article maybe in the last few years about how wannabe influencers will say they got something free that they actually bought. This includes expensive trips. It’s done to try to attract free stuff & is thought of as an “investment” but according to the article, it rarely pays off.

        2. I feel like you’re talking about Magpie by Jen Shoop or whatever it’s called.

    4. Influencers can make BONKERS amount of money, I’m telling you. Like millions of dollars a year from sponsored posts.

      1. PS, I don’t know what you’re being weird about not naming names. It’s a public blog.

      2. I don’t think that’s the norm for very many. I have a friend who has been blogging for about 10 years and has some pretty big sponsorships (Nike, Eloquii, Benefit cosmetics come to mind but there are so many others large national brands) but she still works a normal 9-5 and lives in a 2 bed apartment in Chicago—not even a condo or something with decent square footage. Nice, but tiny. Clothes coming out her ears but they were all mostly free.

    5. (a) They get a ton for free; (b) They return a ton after faking use of it in photos.

        1. +1 for people doing this. For years. Wealthy or not. Drove my dress shop owning grandmother nuts!

    6. There’s a book called Swipe Up for More by Stephanie MacNeal that goes into detail about the earning potential of influencers. It was pretty eye-opening.

      Plus, if you think about it, these women are basically marketing/advertising geniuses. If we didn’t begrudge Don Draper his earnings, we shouldn’t chastise these women for doing basically the same thing (some of them make A LOT of money for the companies they feature), it just looks different in 2024.

      1. Geniuses is a stretch, to me. I think most just lucked into it, and now there are a lot of wannabes.

        1. I don’t know; I’ll grant them genius. Genius is rarely successful without luck!

        2. Yeah, genius wasn’t quite the word I wanted. But the successful ones do work hard and have solid, genuine writing/communication/sales skills. It’s not just taking pictures, if you want to be very successful.

        3. I have somehow become friends with an influencer who has a blog and 170k+ followers on IG. She says the most she ever got paid for one ad was $12,000 for a 1 minute reel, which is bananas money to me but girlie also hustles HARD and is a born salesperson. It might have evolved out of a blog she started for fun, but now it’s a full time job for her and she treats it like one.

      2. Don Draper was fictional
        I definitely begrudged Roger Sterling his earnings

        And I do begrudge a former president his earnings

    7. I live amongst the affluent and I don’t know how I’d get through the day if I was always doing the math on their lifestyles and belongings. Many, many people have much much, much more money than I do. Others may be in debt. I really don’t worry about it. My parents always told me not to count other people’s money but it seems like a hobby on this board. No good will come of it.

    8. She may have a trust fund that supports it.

      She may have a very wealthy husband.

      She may (like a woman in my neighborhood) spend profligately, but then resell everything 2-3 months later for 50% of what she paid.

      She may be getting it for free and not disclosing that it’s a sponsored post.

      She may be funding it with massive debt.

      Or, she may just be earning 5- or 6-figures from her blog advertising and channels it all back into consumerism and content.

      But now that you have our attention… who is it?

    9. Sometimes influencers will wear the pieces or do a haul and return everything after. Does she wear the stuff she posts in hauls over and over or is it rare?

    10. Influencers link a lot of stuff because linking is the main way make profits (except for very very big ones like Cup of Jo who make serious $$ from page views alone). I wouldn’t assume they’re keeping everything they show/link.

    11. It boggles my mind. Two in particular that I follow that I just don’t get are Megan Stokes (she just bought a multi million dollar home in Charleston (and he husband does not work outside the home)) and Chris Loves Julia (DIY couple). Chris loves Julia especially because they have a whole staff of people that they employ… I can’t imagine they have enough money coming into support multiple full time employees.

      1. CLJ has more than 1M followers. They definitely have the income to support a staff.

      2. Do you a link to the Stokes house? Her blog seems hard to follow – can find a reference to building a house, but not buying one.

          1. That is the new house. They sold their prior house for $7.5 million. You can find it if you search for recently sold homes in Mount Pleasant.

      3. I think they also have a deal with Pottery Barn, bc there’s a bunch of furniture on PB Kids with their name on it (IIRC).

    12. It’s a combination of reselling and renting items. If you resell an item pretty quickly, you can make back half or more of the purchase price even if you sell through one of the big resellers. And you can rent a lot of this stuff for a fraction of the price. I don’t think these people are buying and holding onto everything.

    13. Influencers make way way more than most people realize. I have a friend who only has 20k followers and she earns low six figures. She says the people with ~100k followers earn mid-high six figures, and there are influencers with bigger followings who are definitely in seven figure annual income territory. Most influencers with >100k followers do it as a full time job and often support a spouse and several employees.

    14. I assume that many bloggers buy and return–they feature an item, keep some, and return many. Just a guess…unless it is a sponsored item, in which case it was likely gifted to her.

  3. I’m in my early 30s living in SF, and my partner’s extended social group is a mix of tech founders, venture capital guys, and engineers who are all really obsessed with money and clout. I find going to parties with this crowd a bit exhausting, as it feels like there is a unspoken ranking system or sense of prestige based on where you work or how your startup is doing. Some people will ask almost immediately where you work, and it’s clear their intention is to assess the status associated with it. Other times, there’s just an almost astounding lack of awareness about how privileged and out of touch their sense of money is.

    I work in a non-tech field, and in general feel very accomplished and satisfied with my life and work. But hanging out with this group definitely makes me feel insecure about how I’ll be perceived or worry about being judged. I was realizing that it will likely get worse over time, as currently our net worths and income are generally pretty similar, but that if all of these startups take off, they could be worth hundreds of millions and have giant mansions. I’m worried about feeling even more judged by this crowd, or like there will be even more of a measuring contest in years to come with starker divides. I don’t value extreme wealth and don’t want to chase it though.

    Has anyone dealt with this kind of social group before? Any lessons learned or mindsets to adopt? I imagine it’s similar in finance or other fields.

    1. I honestly dropped most of these folks from my social circle, I realized one day that they just weren’t good humans, they had bad values and I didn’t want to spend time with people like that. My friend circle now is a lot more varied: social workers, teachers, accountants, a fire fighter even! These are people with a good head on their shoulders and values I support. It sucks to lose long time friends but sometimes people change and values diverge.

    2. I worked briefly in tech during the pandemic, but I was a remote worker based far outside of the Bay area. I saw what you meant and it made me relieved to live where I do. I live in a major city, but the startup scene is smaller and doesn’t dominate. We have a mix of industries here, so it’s more common to meet people who do lots of different types of things. In the Bay area, everyone I met was the same—from somewhere else, moved there to work in tech, and spent all their free time hanging out/networking with people exactly like them from other tech companies. People were nice, but there was a definite social hierarchy that I wasn’t used to and no one knew what to make of me because I came from outside of tech and clearly did not have plans to stay in it.

      Everyone was diverse on paper (but skewing very Asian with less Black/Latino representation) but not as diverse when it came to goals/politics. It was common to go from one startup to the next to make as much as possible when the startup went public. Everyone had a Tesla, wore branded fleeces and backpacks provided by their companies, and overall it was this very casual wealth, coded in a way that once you knew about it you couldn’t unsee it, but on the surface they all looked very relaxed and chill. Very different from finance wealth.

      I remember my company flew me to SF once for an onsite and I was staying at a nice hotel and had to walk about five blocks to our offices. On the way to the office, you’d pass the occasional homeless/mentally unstable person and otherwise you’d just see mobs of obvious tech workers on a mission walking to their next meeting in AllBirds or New Balances or whatever the sneaker of the moment was, talking loudly on Airpods, and clutching their $8 Blue Bottle latte. I found it fascinating but SO weird.

    3. Come to Oakland/Berkeley and hang out with the nonprofit crowd! Most people in the Bay Area do not work in tech and are not like these guys.
      Many of these start ups will not be in business in a few years. Even if a start up does well, or goes public, it doesn’t mean these individual workers will get a big payout, although maybe they will. Hopefully they eventually mature.

      1. I second this. I’m an East Bay person too but spent a lot of my social time in SF when I was younger. Finding your people outside of tech, or finding tech people who are lower key, helps. Reminding yourself that while sure, some of these folks may strike it rich but many will not can also help. I also recommend checking out the arts organizations (opera, ballet, symphony, fine arts museums). They all have young professionals’ auxiliaries and I met lots of interesting non-tech people through their events, many of whom remain close friends now that we’re aging out of the target demographic.

    4. Similar age, also live in SF, would say that represents about half my friend group here. I don’t work in tech, but my own field is not much better (finance).

      Main lesson is don’t make it 100% of your social life. Find other ways to meet people who are different with different values. Cliched, but things that have helped me include: volunteering for a cause (IMO ideally direct services, helping those in need) you care about, doing an off-the-beaten path activity and nurturing other hobbies.

      If you ever want to grab coffee in SF, I’d be happy to meet up! I can be reached at corporettesuperanon at the g-mail.

    5. Yeah, I think it’s because life = work to them. If you start talking about other things, like hiking or cooking, they’ll switch to trying to outdo you on those topics.

    6. This is part of why I left the Bay Area… this is just how Silicon Valley is, unless you find a niche circle made up entirely of non-tech people.

      1. That brings me to the question of what does your partner think about all this?
        My husband has this one friend from college who he is (was?) really close with, and they still have a lot of affection for each other. But friend went on to investment banking/tech, and the last time my husband was part of a group hangout, everyone was lamenting how conservatives are sadly eroding democracy, but voting for anyone else was tragically impossible because taxes might go up. We only hang out with friend solo now. He always makes self-deprecating jokes about working for the devil and how once upon a time he wished to do some good in the world, but he’s clearly not willing to make a change. I think husband is nostalgic for the friendship they used to have, but now we just have dinner once a year and that’s fine.

    8. Do you have to hang out with these people? It doesn’t sound like your partner is that close to them. Also, they sound exhausting and shallow.

    9. You have gotten good advice. At social events look for other people at the perimeter of the event; they are likely to be the plus ones who aren’t in tech.

    10. You’re wasting a lot of mental energy worrying about whether they judge you or what they think of you. The nice thing about being outside the tech circle is they don’t really have a good metric to “rank” you. You’re not associated with any of their usual status markers (which startup you work for, which VC you know, whether you belong to The Battery, etc.)

    11. So, I live in SF, am a bit older, work in tech, and I know the type of cringey folks you are referencing. They name drop which famous tech founders they know, they constantly add little insider tidbits that they consider important (oh, yeah, Jack and I go way back to when he was only at Twitter…, oh yeah, he just joined me in the Series B for Fred’s latest startup–super hard to get it on that one, etc.)

      What I do–sit as far away from these people as possible at dinner. I play bingo with my friend who is a tech spouse, and laugh at the asinine stuff these people say.

      I have worked for and with many famous people and…they’re just people. I feel no need to talk about them all the time.

      Avoid these people or just know that it stems from weird insecurity and clinging-on. You don’t have to play into their ego.

      Thank you for making the world go around by daring to be a mere non-tech mortal. Ha!

  4. Recommendations for a dessert to bring to a Easter lunch? Not cake (there will already be one or two). Hopefully something relatively easy but packs a “wow” factor :)

    1. I like individual pavlovas with some lemon curd and (unsweetened) whipped cream. They even look like eggs! I use the recipe from Recipe Tin Eats.

    3. I’m doing lemon bars but swirling in some raspberry jam so they look a little more fancy.

    4. I don’t like to cook. So I’m going to make the Easy Easter Rice Krispie Treats posted by pbfingers. Link to follow. It looks like W@lmart sells a house brand of rice krispie cereal that doesn’t have malt and appears to have no gluten containing ingredients to make it friendly for those who avoid gluten.

    6. Joan Nathan’s “Compote of Oranges.” I am not finding a recipe on line to post here.

      1. Yeah why not a fruit salad? Add some mint leaves or a honey dressing to look springy and more homemade

  5. Can someone recommend a menu for Easter dinner for me? As of now, I’m hosting dinner for 16 people. Someone is bringing a ham, someone is bringing a cake, and I’m doing the rest. I’m completely uninspired and probably need to go to the store tonight.

    2. I think I’d pick up some baby or fingerling potatoes to roast, asparagus to saute or roast in another pan, maybe those multicolor carrots too, greens + cheese (maybe goat cheese?) + berries (maybe strawberries?) and any vinaigrette ingredients I need for a light seasonal side salad, and Lambrusco in addition to some popular white wine. And I might grab some bread from a bakery (I don’t eat bread, but I assume they might have something nice for Easter on sale tomorrow).

      1. It’s “chew-gee”, right?

        Also, I was too old to say it in the first place and likely to use it incorrectly, so no?

      1. LOL. I said to my SO the other day that one of our friends needs to stop trying to make fetch happen and he – a 67-y-o Black man, not Mean Girls’s target audientce – just looked at me blankly. Now I am going to make him watch it …

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