There are no two ways about it: last season’s Miu Miu runway bags were a bit of a catastrophe, even for someone like me who generally thinks that Miuccia Prada does no wrong in either of her lines. Thankfully, Miu Miu Fall 2012 is much better. The line doesn’t look like Miu Miu so much as it does Prada Lite, but the bags are bold, structured takes on traditional shapes – an accessories avenue that rarely leads a designer astray.

The handbags during the Chanel runway shows can be totally hit or miss – sometimes Uncle Karl equips his models with hardly any bags, sometimes they’re crazy-literal like spring’s sea shells, sometimes they’re just the same ol’ Chanel that we’re all used to. In the case of shows like Chanel Fall 2012, though, the bags get better and better as the show progresses and remind you why Chanel sells bags hand over fist in the first place.

My affection for Valentino Fall 2012, a collection from a brand whose runway bags I often don’t love, seems like part of a wider trend for the season. Specifically, if you’re a bag lover, Fall 2012 is going to be chock full of beautiful things for you to lust after and a few that you may actually end up buying and carrying, either for the season for for years afterward.

I don’t like to dance on anyone’s grave (sorry, Hannah MacGibbon), but Clare Waight Keller’s second collection as the creative director of Chloe hits it out of the park even harder than the first one did, particularly when it comes to handbags. Looking at the feminine, luxurious, modern leather pieces that Keller’s team conceived for Chloe Fall 2012 makes it nearly impossible to remember the eye-searing catastrophe of MacGibbon’s last collection for the French house only a year ago.

During the two previous season that new creative director Christophe Lemaire has shown for Hermes, the selection of handbags in the runway shows has left something to be desired. What’s there is beautiful, of course, but there’s just not much of it, particularly when you consider that Hermes’ brand identity is centered so heavily on the art of the leather bag.

If ever you questioned that Fall 2012 is all about black, look no further than the Loewe Fall 2012 show. Not only was the collection as a whole rooted heavily in every New Yorker’s favorite color, but the bags were almost all inky black leather. There were peeks of navy, ivory and baby pink here and there, but noir ruled Loewe’s night in Paris.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a collection of accessories as joyful as those from Lanvin Fall 2012. Celebrating Alber Elbaz’s 10th anniversary at the previously defunct French house, every look was filled with enough handbags, jewelry, gloves and furs to satisfy even the most maximalist of personal tastes. Of course, the looks will be broken down to their elements for retail and you can wear just one giant mirror necklace or marble-inlaid (it looks like marble, anyway) clutch, but why settle for just the basics?

Have you been following along with the endless rumors about who is or who is not going to be replacing John Galliano at Dior? I have, partly because it’s my job and partly because I love a good, public mess, and it would seem that LVMH is no closer to naming a successor than it was the day it dismissed Galliano over his anti-Semitic verbal attacks against patrons at a Paris café.

Y’all. YOU GUYS. The Balenciaga Fall 2012 runway bags are good. They manage to play with proportion in that signature Nicolas Ghesquiere way without sacrificing wearability, the combination of which is making me absolutely salivate with handbag lust. I never expect to get particularly excited about Balenciaga’s runway accessories because even though I’m a fangirl who loves the brand’s runway collections, the bags usually sacrifice wearability for experimental aesthetics.

At the risk of employing a cliche, I think black might be the new black. The inky color beloved by fashion people and regular folks alike (especially in New York) has been oddly omnipresent in Fall 2012 collections; because it doesn’t photograph well and more vivid colors are preferred for magazine editorials, black often finds itself relegated to a designer’s non-runway line.