Last fall I began to lust after the beautiful Luella Gisele bag. And to dream that I could become an entry-level designer bag owner by finding a slightly-used satchel. I was sure I could find the castoffs of someone from a higher station who had snapped up the latest “it” bag only to tire of it few months later.

So, just before Thanksgiving, I became the owner of what I thought was a gently used Luella tote, for about one third of what the retail price would have been. I was so proud of it, I carried it into posh boutiques, where shoppers and clerks oooed and ahhed over it.

The smell of failure

Then, just after the holidays, my purse began to stink like fish. I theorized that I had moved the bag to clear some space while cooking a salmon dinner for Christmas, and in the process had somehow splashed fish oil on the purse's lovely burgundy handle.

My husband began to complain about the bag and asked when I was going to “get rid of the fish purse.”

For weeks I resisted his request. I tried leather cleaner, white vinegar and linseed oil, and even baby wipes, but nothing removed the smell. Finally I took the bag to a mom-and-pop leather repair shop down the street.

A tan called Wanda

“This bag is not dirty,” said the mom, calling her husband from the back of the shop to verify her findings.

“No,” said he, “the trouble is, the leather has not been properly tanned.”

The prognosis was as sour as the diagnosis had been simple. My bag would simply smell worse and worse over time.

I had purchased a grey-market, authentic but irregular Luella tote that was probably to have been destroyed at the factory. Someone at the production house must have sold the bad inventory to a cousin who had a business running defective luxury items. A few calls to the big department stores revealed that my bag had never been sold in burgundy. My guess is that the whole beautiful run had been scrapped because of bad tanning.

Yes, any dolt can identify a fake Marc Jacobs Stam, or a vinyl Louis Vuitton Speedy, but it takes a very special, too-smart-for-her-own-good dolt to be burned by irregulars. And that's a fashion tip I learned the hard way.