I am definitely a leather person. And an "older leather" fanatic.
No matter how beautiful the current leather is, or how lucky you can get, it just isn't like the 03 and 04 and s/s 05 leather.
I have had very broken bags from every season from 2003 until this current season, and they just can't compare. Two of my new-type leather bags had leather that cracked.
The glaze used on bbags now makes the bags very smooth. Even if the newer bags are very broken in and the glaze has worn off a bit, the leather is still mostly smooth and doesn't have the million tiny wrinkles that are characteristic of the older bags. Fall 2007 was the best leather season we've had since spring 2005, imo. As soon as those bags get really beaten up and broken in, that's when we'll be able to compare the old leather to the best of the new.
The older leather looks a lot more vintage and wrikly, maybe the glazed, smooth current leather is like that to have a more polished and stiff look to go with the blingy giant hardware. It doesn't even feel like Balenciaga to me, it's closer to MJ... But then, I'm not really a giant hardware fan
I know there's huge variation in every season nowadays,which the SAs use as an excuse mostly, but in 03-05 there was no variation in the greatness of the leather, it depended mostly on the level of broken in-ness.
Anyway, don't mean to offend anyone or sound snobbish when I say that they don't make them like they used to. It's just so different. You need to see an old bag irl to embrace its leather superiority. Just my opinion.