Is This The End Of The 'It' Bag?

Loewe's Papelle Bage $1045

Perhaps my prediction two years ago of the end of the 'It' bag was premature, but at least one Luxe house is moving in that direction.

From the WSJ

The Anti 'It' Handbag

From 2005 to 2007, Stuart Vevers was known for creating showy studded and tasseled "it" handbags, transforming staid British brand Mulberry into a hot contemporary label.

Now he's headed in the opposite direction.

Well this sounds promising

To do that, he's been leaning toward simplicity over bling, functionality over flash. One of his newest creations: a leather version of an ordinary brown paper grocery bag for about $1,045. He's making a point of using the same bag shapes season after season—the opposite of "it" bags' short fashion cycle. And he's made sure that Loewe bags are lightweight, under two pounds. "It's kind of taking the bag back to its purest functionality," Mr. Vevers says.

I appreciate the end of the wasteful and over consumptionist (is that a word?) habits encouraged by the purposefully designed short fashion cycle,

but isn't this just the same marketing strategy of Hermes with their Birkin and Kelly bags?

I can only hope that Mr, Vevers will be as successful with his anti "It" bag designs for venerable Spanish luxe brand Loewe, now owned by LVMH, as Hermes was with the Birkin design

but can he please come up with something better than a $1000 grocery bag look alike.

Marc Jacobs Brings Us The Ugliest It Bag...Ever

Words fail me when I look at this LV bag. It is so hideous that it leaves me speechless.
But the Mail Online has plenty to say about it
Yours for £26,000: The most hideous It Bag ever made

There was me thinking we'd got over It - our addiction to It bags - and then up pops Posh with her £24,740 bordeaux porosus crocodile Birkin.
Before you knew it, the fashion industry had spawned a plague of the ugliest, silliest, most outrageously priced It bags imaginable.
What drugs do you have to be on to design a bag that looks like it's made of material from a Seventies council estate sofa, fossilised witchetty grubs and more cheap leather tassels than a rodeo beauty pageant?



What is not kind and must be some kind of joke (along the lines of: let's design the most hideous bag any woman has ever carried and call it cutting-edge fashion) is the £26,000 they're charging for it.
As Marc Jacobs says, there are Louis Vuitton addicts so desperate that they'll buy any old junk they 'design', however hideous. And junk it is.
Go read the rest of the article for some other really hideous bags that also cost a bundle.

It always makes me wonder, who buys these bags? Surely more women that Posh are buying these things because you can't make a market on one client alone....even if it is Posh.

And now for something completely different.
A Valentines Day suggestion

Van Cleef and Arpels Diamond Heart Pendant from Beladora $2950

At approximately 1/10th the cost of the uglyLouis Vuitton bag....vintage Van Cleef.

Akris Accessories - Do We Need Them?

Do you ever get to the point where you just think that there is too much product out there?
Really, how many brands of handbags do we need?

From the WSJ
Akris Debuts Its Accessories Line
Albert Kriemler is known for delivering elegant vertical, architectural lines in his clothes, making them of the most expensive fabrics possible in Switzerland, and selling them like crazy. Family-owned Akris’s clothes, which he designs, outsell Armani at many department stores.

So it will be very, very interesting to see how his handbags, belts and shoes sell. In a surprise decision several months ago, Akris announced that it will produce accessories. Last fall, Kriemler insisted to me that he had no plans for accessories — despite the allure of their higher profit margins. Then he caved.

Accessories, make-up and perfume...for the sellers it's all about margins
for the buyers it's all about getting a piece of the brand for less money
You can't afford Dior couture?
No problem, just spritz yourself with Dior perfume and feel the Diorescenceness of it all

Akris is a great line, probably because the designs are tasteful and more importantly wearable, if you can afford a couple of thousand for a dress, but did they need to create yet another line of overpriced handbags.

Would you buy an Akris bag over a Balenciaga bag?

From Bag Snob to Bag Slave

YSL Muse Bag at Neiman Marcus $1995

From the Times Online

Bag slave
Apparently, the It-bag moment is officially over. The trouble is, nobody has told my bag. Shane Watson explores a co-dependency

It is only when you start to contemplate life without an It bag that you realise how far removed from handbags these accessories have become. They are personalities in their own right, with their own agendas and profiles.
You don’t own an It bag — you hook up with it and hope for the best.