I'm not that familiar with HH but totally agree about Botkier....I'd take one of their old bags in excellent condition over the new ones any day
have the "contemporary" mid-level bags lost their following?
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Good for you for being the one not carrying the brand everyone else was.
I don't think the PF is necessarily representative of the general population. I had read somewhere a while back that Calvin Klein was the biggest seller
It's not that I don't like his bags, I just don't have any. I also saw a baby wearing MK sneakers to match her mom's.
I don't dislike them either but once Everyone starts carrying a bag it loses a lot of appeal for me
This is a super interesting thread!
In my current neck of the woods, no, the middle contemporary handbag reigns supreme.
This is an average town, with a large university. There's probably a population of 250,000 plus about 50,000 students.
You cannot go out to check your mail without spotting MK or Coach. Coach Factory, that is. This area is sick with MK/Coach Factory. There's a goodly amount of Kate Spade, lots of Fossil, etc. Plenty of mid-price Dooney that I know came from QVC or TJ Maxx, not a boutique.
The highest end bag I've ever seen in this town is LV, and never the LV that actually gets pricey, just monogram canvas and occasionally Damier Ebene. And lots of the LV here is fake anyway.
I've never seen a real Chanel here, only fake, and fake Gucci is fairly common. Maybe one or two tiny nylon Prada that looked like flea market remainders.
That's about it. It's basically ALL midlevel contemporary here. So they're still going strong in Texas, for sure.
People here are not POOR, but I'd guess there are only a handful who could comfortably flop down more than five grand on a handbag more than once or twice a decade. So it seems rather than buying fakes at purse parties, they just carry cheaper brands, which I think is great. Fakes are tacky and fool no one except people you don't care about impressing anyway.
Where I used to live, even the people I knew who did own true high-end (Chanel, Hermes, etc) were not toting them everywhere every day.
I do like my LV and Mulberry and Bals, but most often I am carrying mid level contemporary, honestly. Don't care what bag snobs think.
In my current neck of the woods, no, the middle contemporary handbag reigns supreme.
This is an average town, with a large university. There's probably a population of 250,000 plus about 50,000 students.
You cannot go out to check your mail without spotting MK or Coach. Coach Factory, that is. This area is sick with MK/Coach Factory. There's a goodly amount of Kate Spade, lots of Fossil, etc. Plenty of mid-price Dooney that I know came from QVC or TJ Maxx, not a boutique.
The highest end bag I've ever seen in this town is LV, and never the LV that actually gets pricey, just monogram canvas and occasionally Damier Ebene. And lots of the LV here is fake anyway.
I've never seen a real Chanel here, only fake, and fake Gucci is fairly common. Maybe one or two tiny nylon Prada that looked like flea market remainders.
That's about it. It's basically ALL midlevel contemporary here. So they're still going strong in Texas, for sure.
People here are not POOR, but I'd guess there are only a handful who could comfortably flop down more than five grand on a handbag more than once or twice a decade. So it seems rather than buying fakes at purse parties, they just carry cheaper brands, which I think is great. Fakes are tacky and fool no one except people you don't care about impressing anyway.
Where I used to live, even the people I knew who did own true high-end (Chanel, Hermes, etc) were not toting them everywhere every day.
I do like my LV and Mulberry and Bals, but most often I am carrying mid level contemporary, honestly. Don't care what bag snobs think.
first of all love your avatar
fake LV comment made me remember something. A friend of DH's sister was visiting from MA. Apparently she and her husband had some money - some sort of successful business. She had several LVs but she also liked fake LV. Would seem wrong to people here on the PF but she thought a good fake was fine for her. She didn't strike me as particularly sophisticated and maybe never heard of how the counterfeit bags are made, slave labor, etc.
I see a lot of mono LV around here and I can't really tell the difference. I kinda assume if the woman looks affluent and is shopping in the high end mall it's probably real. Otherwise, if I seem some middle class looking woman carrying one at Costco, I just don't know. For me if I were to buy LV I'd prefer a leather one rather than the mono.
I guess perhaps you could say they've lost their following among the people who were buying them at first, when they were less prevalent.
As the OP said, the attitude of 'once everyone buys it, I don't want it anymore' is very common.
I will say though that I don't subscribe to that. I mean, I don't think that way about other stuff. I'm not going to stop buying Kellogg's Corn Flakes and switch to some hipster handmade flakes solely because everyone buys Kellogg's. I use an iPod instead of some off-brand, even though iPods are everywhere. I'm not going to switch to Spoon from Coldplay because Coldplay is now too popular...and so on.
If I liked a brand before it got overexposed, I'll still like it afterwards. I MIGHT very well buy less OF it, but I've always blamed that on the fact that after they blow up, they tend to get more cheaply made. See Coach Factory as a prime example. And once people start expecting Coach to be inexpensive, thanks to Factory, it gets harder to sell high quality bags in the boutiques because the masses do not understand why two items from the same brand shouldn't both be a hundred bucks despite the fact that one is made of cut emerald and the other one is made of coke bottles. Hey, they're both green, right?
As the OP said, the attitude of 'once everyone buys it, I don't want it anymore' is very common.
I will say though that I don't subscribe to that. I mean, I don't think that way about other stuff. I'm not going to stop buying Kellogg's Corn Flakes and switch to some hipster handmade flakes solely because everyone buys Kellogg's. I use an iPod instead of some off-brand, even though iPods are everywhere. I'm not going to switch to Spoon from Coldplay because Coldplay is now too popular...and so on.
If I liked a brand before it got overexposed, I'll still like it afterwards. I MIGHT very well buy less OF it, but I've always blamed that on the fact that after they blow up, they tend to get more cheaply made. See Coach Factory as a prime example. And once people start expecting Coach to be inexpensive, thanks to Factory, it gets harder to sell high quality bags in the boutiques because the masses do not understand why two items from the same brand shouldn't both be a hundred bucks despite the fact that one is made of cut emerald and the other one is made of coke bottles. Hey, they're both green, right?
But I do get why people, after a certain point of saturation, don't want what everyone else has.
I really do suspect that might be a cause of the turn against MK and that tier of bag here.
But really, it's going to get to that point with the higher tiers too.
Human history is full of wealthy people deliberately setting themselves apart from the 'rabble'. When certain color dyes were wildly expensive, rich people couldn't get enough of em'. Now that you can buy rich jewel tones and deep blacks at any back alley flea stall, rich folks don't worry about what color which person is wearing other than what's generally 'in' for the season. No one is going to pay a month's salary for a purple coat solely because it's purple anymore.
It's always been something. Only rich people wear this fabric, this color, only rich people can wear their hair this way, rich people have silver or pewter or china table implements for everything and poor people eat off of stoneware or wood.
Well, now bone china or sterling silver can be had at TJ Maxx.
What's left?? Now rich people REALLY have to shell out to be exclusive. Now it's a ten thousand dollar bag, and quite frankly all of us have seen Chanels or Hermes in the hands of ladies who you know good and well would have been landless serfs three centuries ago. Heck, I would have been a landless serf three centuries ago.
It's going to get to the point where wealthy people start turning the other way and jockey to outcompete each other for the best deal. Or for the most local, handmade bag.
Not too long ago, being thin/skinny was considered wildly unattractive. Why? Maybe because for most of history if you were skinny it meant you were POOR.
Nowadays it's easy in developed countries to get enough calories to be plump, and it's a lot harder to avoid getting fat when all you can afford is processed foods and junk.
So now you can never be too rich or too thin, as they say.
This is a real rat race. I'll carry my mid level contemporary bags or my no-name bags or my 'worthy' bags and like em'. What a drag it must be sometimes to BE some of these midlevel houses and be forever biting and scratching to stay relevant and desirable!
I really do suspect that might be a cause of the turn against MK and that tier of bag here.
But really, it's going to get to that point with the higher tiers too.
Human history is full of wealthy people deliberately setting themselves apart from the 'rabble'. When certain color dyes were wildly expensive, rich people couldn't get enough of em'. Now that you can buy rich jewel tones and deep blacks at any back alley flea stall, rich folks don't worry about what color which person is wearing other than what's generally 'in' for the season. No one is going to pay a month's salary for a purple coat solely because it's purple anymore.
It's always been something. Only rich people wear this fabric, this color, only rich people can wear their hair this way, rich people have silver or pewter or china table implements for everything and poor people eat off of stoneware or wood.
Well, now bone china or sterling silver can be had at TJ Maxx.
What's left?? Now rich people REALLY have to shell out to be exclusive. Now it's a ten thousand dollar bag, and quite frankly all of us have seen Chanels or Hermes in the hands of ladies who you know good and well would have been landless serfs three centuries ago. Heck, I would have been a landless serf three centuries ago.
It's going to get to the point where wealthy people start turning the other way and jockey to outcompete each other for the best deal. Or for the most local, handmade bag.
Not too long ago, being thin/skinny was considered wildly unattractive. Why? Maybe because for most of history if you were skinny it meant you were POOR.
Nowadays it's easy in developed countries to get enough calories to be plump, and it's a lot harder to avoid getting fat when all you can afford is processed foods and junk.
So now you can never be too rich or too thin, as they say.
This is a real rat race. I'll carry my mid level contemporary bags or my no-name bags or my 'worthy' bags and like em'. What a drag it must be sometimes to BE some of these midlevel houses and be forever biting and scratching to stay relevant and desirable!
It's just like any other brand; if you love it and have had enough pieces and follow it, you just get a radar for fakery.
Now, some counterfeiters are for sure better than others; sometimes it's just little things like this style should have x stitches per inch and this one doesn't. Or they only made this collection in Spain, but yours says Made In France. Busted!!
But after you eyeball and handle enough, the 'vachetta' is obviously vinyl. The stitching is gigantic compared to normal. The colors of the monogram are off. The monogram is right side up on both sides when it shouldn't be, the lining is supposed to be raspberry and it's grey, etc etc.
LV and Dooney are the only brands I would feel comfortable judging (not out loud, of course)but lots of people who fangirl a brand are eyeballing bags silently. If it's fake, they are usually not fooled. And if you're carrying a status bag for status, that means you will have no status in that crowd.
I do think a ton of people though carry fakes and actually don't know. They bought on eBay without realizing what a bunch of snakes there are there. But she had the receipt! No, she had a receipt. You can buy receipts too. Or they got it from a boyfriend who doesn't know tuna from salmon; he just knows Gucci is status and he went on Poshmark because why pay $1600 if this girl only wants $150...?
It really is common, and the cheapening of brands (especially the middle contemporary brands) doesn't help us. If you handed me a Rebecca Minkoff bag of today six years ago, I'd say it was fake. Because six years ago they were heavier and better leather and had better hardware. But no, it's not fake, they're just cheaping it down now.
Easier to fake, sadly for the brand. And that's why I'd never call someone out on a 'fake Coach or Michael Kors or that tier of brand. They're cheaping out so fast, maybe your flaking plastic hardware IS legit, shoot.
I think I may have one or two that are new to me now, but were very popular 10 years ago. I love them enough that I would have bought them then, if I knew about them but wasn't into bags then.
However for me it always comes down to quality. Would the bags of today still look almost new in 10 years? Because the 10 year old bags I have now do.
However for me it always comes down to quality. Would the bags of today still look almost new in 10 years? Because the 10 year old bags I have now do.
This article is interesting. "Rather than conspicuous consumption" In the end you're not only bragging that you are "a smart shopper" isn't one just trying to always be ahead of the curve and trends especially with Millennials?
Although I will admit one reason I went for Mansur Gavriel over Saint Laurent is because I was told the leather quality was better.
I think Coach is doing a pretty stellar job. For sure his western themes and over embellishing isn't for everyone, but they're getting back to good quality leather. I own two swaggers and they are my work horses.
As for Kate Spade and Michael Kors, I try to veer away from saffiano bags as a preference. Also Kate Spade comes across a bit too cutesy for me, and Michael Kors a bit trendy. I don't think contemporary brands will completely lose their following as they are still providing and affordable market, but seeing sales too frequently only serves to hurt and diminish the value of each brand.
I should also mention that Marc by Marc Jacobs used to have a good following, but he has seemed to lose his touch with the handbag market for awhile now.
As for Kate Spade and Michael Kors, I try to veer away from saffiano bags as a preference. Also Kate Spade comes across a bit too cutesy for me, and Michael Kors a bit trendy. I don't think contemporary brands will completely lose their following as they are still providing and affordable market, but seeing sales too frequently only serves to hurt and diminish the value of each brand.
I should also mention that Marc by Marc Jacobs used to have a good following, but he has seemed to lose his touch with the handbag market for awhile now.
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I think the minimalist style of Mansur Gavriel and others will be mimicked by those no longer setting trends. I wanted a Furla wallet but didn’t want the raised metal logo in it. I told the girl working there I wish it were embossed. She said that the newer stuff coming out is embossed.