Stella McCartney is a designer who’s beloved by fashion people, but I don’t always quite understand her appeal. Her knits are incredible, but she’s a fan of the sort of boxy, difficult proportions that are all but unwearable unless you’re as leggy as Karlie Kloss. When it comes to her handbags, I’m eternally confused why customers pay premier designer prices for her notoriously faux-leather bags. (I suspect that an enormous number of her casual customers don’t realize their beloved bags are PVC.) Perhaps unsurprisingly, I’m also confused about the potential appeal of the Stella McCartney Embellished Falabella Clutch.
Although McCartney’s Falabella style is starting to feel stale after years of ubiquity, this version lacks any structural changes or refreshments. Instead, the black clutch we’re all familiar with gets a surface makeover with the addition of jewel-studded motifs of a wild night out. Matches, stray earrings, Band-Aids, lipstick swacks; they’re all cartoonishly present. McCartney has spent time as a prodigious London partier, alongside friends like Kate Moss, so the embellishments make a certain amount of thematic sense. They don’t make much aesthetic sense, though; McCartney’s designs aren’t known for their literalness or irreverence, and I can’t help but thinking that this is a kitschy look that someone like Miuccia Prada would pull off with much more finesse. (Not to mention, of course, that Prada’s bag would be real leather.)
Are you here for this clutch, or are you not buying it, literally or figuratively? You can pick up one of your own for $1,340 via Neiman Marcus.
