How much for water?

Am I missing something or what? I just don't get Evian pairing with designers to create a bottle in their particular style, and the public (who? I wonder) wanting to pay in the region of €5/ £5/$13.95 for what is basically water.

This year is the 3rd Evian designer bottle pairing. The first was in 2007 with Christian Lacroix, then 2008 with Jean-Paul Gaultier and this year with Paul Smith.

I hadn't really taken that much notice previously. But yesterday I saw an advertisement for the 'Paul Smith for Evian' marketing campaign and it just made me think why would you pay such a price for a bottle of designer water, drink it and throw away the bottle (oops, I mean recycle). I do think the Paul Smith design is attractive, but I would never buy it. Unless you're actually making a little collection of these bottles or use it as a vase, why would you buy it? Its all just marketing, and trying to get a bigger slice (or droplet in this case) of the market I guess. And the designers themselves? The more publicity the better presumably. I'm sure they got paid nicely for their designs, so they can actually afford their own water.

Last week I was enjoying dinner at a local restaurant in Eindhoven. I had eaten there previously when I was in the first trimester of my pregnancy with Ruby, and we'd ordered 2 bottles of water. When it was time to pay, the charge for the water was €7 per bottle (and certainly not some designer for Evian water). Hello, this is Eindhoven, not Paris or New York. We could have had two cocktails for that price (if I'd be drinking). How on earth can they justify this charge. Last week, remembering said rip-off previously, we asked for carafes of tap water and spent our hard earned cash on frozen Margaritas instead (so delicious and so much more worth the money).