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Danish teenagers spending thousands on designer school bags

Lucie Rychla
March 14th, 2016


This article is more than 8 years old.

Some are willing to pay up to 18,000 kroner just to fit in

Some girls steal to have a designer bag and feel like they belong (photo: gowithfashion.com)

Danish schoolgirls as young as 16 are spending thousands of kroner on designer ‘school bags’, reports Metroxpress.

Some are willing to pay up to 18,000 kroner for brands such as Gucci, Stella McCartney or Saint Laurent.

“I am totally into brands and so I use them [the bags] when I go to school, so they don’t just lie at home,” Alberte Abildsø, a 16-year-old student from Gammel Hellerup Gymnasium, told Metroxpress.

Alberte goes to school with a Saint Laurent bag that cost 15,000 kroner.

Others do it, too
At Aarhus Handelsgymnasium in Risskov, female students use bags from Gucci that cost 9,000 kroner and, in some cases, Céline bags that retail at about 18,000 kroner.

“I take it with me because it’s cool, but I would not do it if others didn’t do it too,” Cilla Lauritsen, who owns a Stella McCartney bag that cost 8,000 kroner, explained to Metroxpress.

Growing trend
According to Anna Bjerre, a psychologist and the head of Girl Talk, a non-profit organisation that helps disadvantaged girls, there is a growing trend among young Danes to have expensive designer products as a standard.

“I’ve talked to girls who have started stealing because they’re worried they won’t fit in because they can’t afford such things,”Bjerre told Metroxpress.

“It’s not necessarily women who come from deprived circumstances, but girls from wealthy families who simply don’t have the money required.”


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”