Fugly Bags

There are no ifs, ands or buts about it – I hate this bag. A lot. I’m not sure that it has any redeeming characteristics of which to speak, and if it does, I couldn’t tell you what they are. Not only that, but the fact that the Marc Jacobs Dancer Tassel Bag was made by one of my favorite handbag designers makes me a little angry.

Marc Jacobs is known for interspersing his relatively staid accessories line with a little dose of crazy every season, but usually I can at least find the good-natured humor in his aesthetic wanderings. I’m not laughing this time, though – it looks like this bag has fallen ill with a terrible case of the tassel pox, a sickness from which I’m afraid it won’t recover.

Last month, I wrote about the cash flow problems that Versace has and how better handbag design could potentially alleviate some of their woes. No other brand makes bags that are such a consistent running joke in high-end bag circles, and they have little to no rabid following when it comes to their accessories.

Sadly, the Versace Gree Shopper could not be a more apt example of why that is. Gaudy metallic? Check. Logos galore? Check. No leather to be found? Check. Astronomical price for a canvas tote? You better believe it.

Can someone, ANYONE, explain to me why this pastel-potholder-looking abomination against fashion costs 1100 freaking dollars?

I’ve got to say at least one nice thing about this bag: Dolce & Gabbana, I like your enthusiasm.

No, actually, I love it. Because the kind of chutzpah it takes to put together seven (that I can count) types of fuzzy animal print onto one bag is the kind of chutzpah that it takes to occasionally create a stinkin’ awesome bag. But at this point, ladies and gentlemen, I have but one caveat: the Dolce & Gabbana Miss Martini Flap Bag is not that bag.

Normally I have a good amount of vitriol for fur bags. Not because I have lots of political opposition to them (although I don’t wear fur), but usually just because they’re pretty ugly. Puffy, shapeless and vulgar are normally words I would use to describe them.

But, for some reason, I’m having trouble coming up with my normal level of self-righteous rage over the Marni Alpaca Tote. It’s not that I like it, because I don’t think I do, but could it be that it’s just not quite as bad as the average fur bag, while still being substantially worse than the average non-fur bag?

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.

I’d like to say, first and foremost, that I have no problem with eccentricity. Particularly in fashion, the desire to be willfully different is what finds new trends and charts new territory. It’s what keeps things going. Without eccentricity, we’d all be wearing sensible shoes and toting around our belongings in canvas grocery bags. And there’s nothing fun about either of those things.

But there’s also usually a problem with creating eccentricity for its own sake, which appears to be what was done with the Dolce & Gabbana Miss Charleston Chain Flap Bag. And I think we can all tell that it didn’t work out particularly well.