We’ve covered this Bottega Veneta Woven Zip Wallet before, when Megs was considering getting it as a replacement for her LV Zip Around Wallet. As even a cursory glance and click around the blog will confirm that our love for Bottega Veneta has grown epically since Megs penned that post more than a year ago.

But even while the glamour of the brand surrounds us, with their ability to custom-make pieces and their head-turning exotics, it’s important to remember that they still make basics like the Bottega Veneta Woven Zip Wallet, that are, for lack of a better word, gorgeous.

The brand to turn to for exotic skins is Bottega Veneta. I have never been let down by the skins Bottega Veneta chooses for their bags, from leathers to exotics. When the Fall Winter 2010 collection went down the runway, I had a hard time keeping myself from actively drooling on my keyboard. Not only did I see gorgeous designs, but also there was use of color that worked perfectly for fall and winter while not being drab.

There are several brand sections that I never miss when I go to a department store – we all have our favorites, and I can’t leave without checking up on Balenciaga and Valentino because they make my favorite bags, but I also don’t miss an opportunity for Bottega Veneta leather-fondling. One touch is all you need to know why the brand’s bags are so pricey.

For the most part, I’ve always considered Bottega Veneta to be a classic, iconic brand. The intrecciato weaving technique is one that can be spotted from across the room or even across a busy street. Personally, it is the classic element of the brand that I love and have come to always expect.

Now, just because there are certain things I expect from a brand like Bottega Veneta does not mean that I cannot appreciate when they think and design a little bit out of the box.

On the tails of Chanel‘s New York City bag exhibit and Gucci‘s artisan world tour, Bottega Veneta has whipped up a little special-event parade of its own.

As many of our readers are well aware, Bottega has always offered customization services for its devoted clients – Women’s Wear Daily reports that the brand “has customized luggage to fit the hold of a client’s private plane, created a handbag to match the color of her favorite lipstick, designed custom wedding dresses and produced leather wall paneling for a client’s home.”

Everyone can go into a store and buy a handbag off of the shelf. Many of those bags we buy are very meaningful to us for different reasons. I now have a handbag in my collection that is so meaningful, so special, and so rare, it has a slight golden glow coming from behind it whenever I look at it. This bag did not come from a shelf.

To quote the title of one of my all-time favorite episodes of Sex and the City, I love a charade. Well, a fashion charade, that is. It almost never fails to impress me when designers are able to take a material that has a certain set of expected characteristics and make it look like something completely different. Earlier this week, I was impressed by how much Maison Martin Margiela made bike reflectors look like sequins, and now I’m feeling similarly pleased with the Bottega Veneta Woven Leather Tote.

Ummmm. This, my friends, is the very first time I have been completely confused with a Bottega Veneta Knot Clutch. I have to admit, I feel completely, 100% without a doubt, in love with knot clutches when they first and continued to appear. The design of these clutches wasn’t completely unique and in fact the designs themselves kept repeating one another over and over again.

Everyone claims they are Irish on St. Patrick’s Day. The excuses for wanting to be Irish involving wanting to ask people to kiss you and being able to drink green alcoholic beverages, sing loudly, wear green, and mostly have a great time. Why would you not want to be Irish today? Fact is, Shannon and I are very Irish. I mean, seriously, with a name like Shannon and Meaghan you would think we still lived in Ireland.

Let’s not mince words about the handbags that went down the Bottega Veneta runway last week in Milan: I cannot recall ever seeing a runway collection that included so many different kinds of bags, all of them utterly beautiful. I’m not even that enormous of a Bottega fan and I was still awed by the details that went into all of them, from oversized crocodile hobos to the tiniest embellished knot clutches.