Fendi Handbags and Purses (Page 7)

I’ve been more than a little critical of Fendi for quite a while now, but between their Spring 2010 runway show earlier this week and the Fendi Calfhair and Sequin Shoulder Bag that we see here, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due: they’re finally doing some fantastically interesting things with their handbag line.

Net A Porter brings us some of their favorite handbags of the season. This group of three is a fashionable trio showing Miu Miu, Fendi and Lanvin. Our personal favorite is the Lanvin bag, with perfect gold stamped-python metallic leather.

Miu Miu Vitello Vintage Leather Clutch | $750

Fendi Fly Leather Shoulder Bag | $1,460

The Fendi Spring 2010 Handbags Collection is the very definition of a “mixed bag.” Har har, bag pun. I know, it was bad. I’ll stop.

Anyway, yes, the bags! Some were amazing – the new soft leather Peekaboos with wood or clear plastic handles were among my favorites, and the addition of exposed stitching, combined with the different handle textures, gives the shape a sense of style that it was missing in its more staid initial iterations. The bags look touchable and a bit vintage, just like the rest of Karl Lagerfeld’s breezy, Parisian collection for the brand.

Other standouts were the Perspex beveled clutches, some completely clear, others with slight tints or exterior studding. The bags were, of course, shown with nothing inside of them, and putting anything in them would be kind of a shame, but how else are you supposed to carry them? They were beautiful and a tad whimsical as art objects, and if the stuff you carry inside your clutches is very beautiful, they might be a workable choice.

And on the other hand, some things just didn’t work at all. We saw leather totes in a variety of colors with an odd, pansy-embroidered snap-on linen cover that was not only puzzling but also not particularly attractive, and Fendi would have done well to omit those completely and add more of the delicious Peekaboo styles, along with a few of the other wood-framed clutches and bags, to the collection instead. They were almost distractingly bad, but ultimately the preponderance of beautiful bags won out.

Yesterday when we were talking about the skunk fur monstrosity that Fendi has chosen to perpetrate on the fashion world at large, several commenters mentioned that the bag itself might be cute, if it weren’t for the formerly stinky dead animal hanging precipitously from it. I applaud those commenters for trying to look beyond the obvious awfulness.

And as luck would have it, Fendi saw fit to make a non-skunkified version for our significantly increased viewing pleasure, and as it turns out, the Fendi Peekaboo Roll Bag is not nearly as terrible as its hairy predecessor.

A little insight into the life of a blogger: every morning, I get up, brush my teeth (well, usually), flop down at my computer and read through the morning’s news (both conventional and fashion-related) and the blogs that I myself enjoy reading. I also scroll through and pretend to read most of the email that I get overnight. When that’s done, I start gathering the bags that I’m going to write about for the day. I have my regular haunts to look through, and sometimes if those don’t work out, I try to find something tangentially related to handbags that I think everyone will like. Those are the tough days – as long as the subject matter comes easily, life is pretty much beautiful on my end.

And when I woke up today and saw the Fendi Skunk Fur Peekaboo Bag sitting in the New Arrivals section of Saks, I knew that today was going to be a good day.

In the past, I’ve been critical of this particular type of Fendi bag. And I still stand by that – in glazed black leather, this bag is boring, plain and simple. But there’s something about the color combination in the Fendi Two-Tone Baguette that makes me enormously fond of the bag, and it just goes to show you what good a small tweak can do.

The juxtaposition of the blush leather with the black trim and light gold chain handle gives the bag a more authentically retro look than just a solid color by itself. At the same time, the combination is positively Parisian, giving the bag an obvious audience in fashion’s many Francophiles (and probably not staving off any of the nagging Chanel comparisons any time soon). The proportion of the bag is petite enough to be worn to a fancy dinner or cocktail party, but I could also easily see it paired with dark denim and a cashmere sweater for fall and winter. I think you can get something more interesting for the price, but if you like this look, the bag is indeed pretty cute. Buy through Net-a-Porter for $1395.