You, sir: Do you ever think about how classy and sophisticated you would look, strolling the sidewalks of Greater Des Moines with an elegant umbrella in hand? If so, you might be the only one who’s thinking that.

“We used to carry the larger ‘stick’ umbrellas,” said Charlie Bechtel, manager at Landmark Luggage in Clive. “But they mostly languished.” Nobody wanted them, so now his inventory of more than 20 umbrella styles relies heavily on the collapsible style. Small, lightweight, convenient. Just not very elegant.

With the rains of spring approaching – the non-freezing variety, with any luck – we found plenty of old-fashioned umbrellas on Web sites such as www.european-umbrellas.com. It led us to imagine the successful businessmen of London and Brussels striding along purposefully, unfazed by the rain.

Here, not so much. “We always run to a car,” Bechtel noted. “We don’t walk unless our car is broken down and our cell phone is discharged.”

However, if you are insightful enough to see that the scarcity of heavy-duty umbrellas creates an opportunity for you to stand out from the crowd, consider these choices:

• Laura Shin tested umbrellas for a Slate.com article, partly by opening and closing them on a windy day on the Staten Island Ferry. The top scorer: the Lippincott model from Brella Bar, priced at $225. It features a solid hickory wood handle with a curve that lets the umbrella dangle nicely from the wrist.

• From a German manufacturer, there’s the Knirps Swarovski, which costs $286 and is fun to mention out loud. The handle is covered with “world-famous” Swarovski crystals. (No, we had never heard of them either.)

• Finally, consider the Brigg Cherry from England, priced at $319. “The handle,” it says here, “is embellished with a silver plate royal warrant collar engraved with the coat-of-arms of the Prince of Wales.” Talk about classy; people will think you stole it during an evening at Buckingham Palace.