Here's a question ... how much did you spend on your car? Chances are, if you do own a car then you are still making payments on that car. Here's a sobering thought ... Louis Vuitton has crafted an extremely limited edition purse (there are only 24 of them in the world) that most probably cost more than the car that you are currently still making payments on. Behold, the $52,000+ Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork purse:



Forget your Coach purse. Put away your Kate Spade. Even Hermes's famous Birkin bag seems positively discount. The Louis Vuitton Tribute Patchwork is this summer's ultimate status bag, ringing in at $52,500 ... "We find the customer there is a very sophisticated client," said Brigid Andrews, Northeast regional vice president for Louis Vuitton. "When there's something that is this special, I'm really not surprised that we had a client who wanted it for her own collection." The company made the bag that special not only by price tag and design -- 14 LV bags were cut up and sewn together to make it -- but also by offering only five for sale in North America and 24 worldwide. R&B superstar Beyonce Knowles got one. The other four? Their names have not been revealed. The bag, says Milton Pedraza, chief executive of market-research firm the Luxury Institute, is a lesson in creating cachet. What, after all, is a luxury retailer to do when even suburban high school students are wearing sunglasses with Chanel's interlocking Cs and toting purses plastered with the LV logo, both real and fake? "If my Louis Vuitton, which I'm paying a few thousand for, everyone has one, what do I get?" Pedraza said. "How do I get that exclusivity that I long for?" To achieve that, darling, you had to pre-order the Tribute Patchwork bag months ago. Louis Vuitton boutiques in New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Chevy Chase got the call. Delivery began discreetly in July, with the bags arriving in a clear, Plexiglas trunk covered with the LV logo. It was publicly photographed on Knowles's arm last month. Purse bloggers (yes, they do exist) also reported spotting the singer toting the bag while wearing a satin shirt, shorts and sky-high stilettos as she left a taping of MTV's "TRL." The Tribute Patchwork is Louis Vuitton's most expensive and exclusive bag to date ... The Tribute Patchwork is handmade at a workshop in France and is made up of pieces of 14 Louis Vuitton handbags, including the monogram denim from spring 2005, the Lady Steamer with Alligator from fall 2006, the Cuir Tresse from spring 2007 and the Talentueux Suhali from spring 2003. Andrews said Louis Vuitton's creative director, Marc Jacobs, designed the Tribute Patchwork "as a celebration of the history of Louis Vuitton."



I, uh, don't know that this purse really comes across as a celebration of Louis Vuitton so much as it looks more like a thing thrown together from pieces of other purses salvaged from the trash dumpster. This Frankenstein purse looks really tacky, I think, and yet it comes splashed with a $50k price tag and everyone is gonna want one. I am an LV fan but I really think this bag is fugly as hell. And, from what I've gathered on PurseBlog.com, it isn't much loved by other LV fans out there either. LOL -- Beyonce would be the type of celeb to rock this bag in public.