Tuesday, June 9, 2009

June10, 2009

Imperial Majesty, which costs $215,000 a bottle, is the most expensive perfume in the world. Would it smell as sweet at any other price?

The extravagant price of Imperial Majesty is due largely to it's creator. It is a Clive Christian signature scent. Sold simply as No. 1, the fragrance is priced at $2,150 an ounce. But the reason Imperial Majesty costs so much is that Christian, a British designer-turned-perfumer, poured 16.9 ounces of No. 1 into a Baccarat crystal bottle, stuck a five-carat diamond into the 18-carat gold collar.

How about a nice pair of designed boots? There are a lot of exotic leathers--alligator, snake and ostrich, to name a few. The more leather, the higher the price, so there were a lot of boots, too, including the pair of $14,000 Manolo Blhanik alligator boots that topped our list!

Wow! Why would anyone pay $14,000 for a pair of boots? Oh, I forgot, they were created by Manolo Blhanik!

Anyone need a nice new pair of jeans? The popular worker’s denim trousers have become modern day fashion and status symbols. Designer jeans come in and out of popularity but in early 2000’s, expensive jeans started coming back into fashion with brands such as APO Jeans, Chip and Pepper, Paper Denim & Cloth, Seven for All Mankind, True Religion and many other brands costing $200 or more per pair.

The Guinness Book of Records lists a pair of Gucci genius jeans featuring elaborate feathers, beads, rips and buttons as most expensive jeans off-the-rack at a cost of $3,134.

But recently Forbes has showcased Escada’s Swarovski crystal-encrusted expensive jeans which sell for $10,000 US.

When it comes to fashion, it seems that the value of an item is associated with its creator. Apparently people will pay big money to get their hands on items created by famous designers. So, value of a fashion article is tied directly to who created it.

Following that line of reasoning you would naturally assume that people would want to tie their own personal value to the greatest Creator and Designer ever, God!

If you make that assumption - you would be wrong! Some of the very same people who covet jeans, or perfumes, or handbags, or boots created by the best known designers, do not value their own creator! In fact, they devalue themselves by insisting that they are the product of the evoluntionary process rather than a special creation of an ominiscent, omnipotent, infinite, and loving God.

There is nothing wrong with having valuable things, but when you have to depend on those things to give you value - that is a problem. How would you know when you have enough? How do you handle those people who have more valuable things than you?

If you feel like you have to acquire value by possessing and attaining valuable stuff, maybe you ought to stop and think through that a little better.

Here's a better idea - BE a valuable thing! Find your value in the God who designed you, created you, redeemed you and desires to re-create you from the inside out. Put down that Gucci and pick up God. Quit trying to add value and accept the value God placed on you when He gave His Son for you!