Marc Jacobs Handbags and Purses (Page 5)

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.

Who knew that “summer fur” would ever be a Thing? Is fashion running out of trends and the only thing that’s left to do is wear things that are wildly inappropriate for the weather? Possibly. And, well I’m sort of ok with that. As Paris Vogue editrix Carine Roitfeld recently said on Twitter, fashion isn’t to make you look attractive, it’s to make you look different.

And, rest assured, wearing something like the Marc Jacobs Gilda Fur & Sequins Flap Bag will definitely accomplish the goal of making a woman look different than most people in society. Then again, if it’s made by one of the biggest designers on the planet and sold by a huge, multinational retailer, is it really that different? Should we all be moving on to the next “different” thing already? Lofty questions, these, but most importantly – is it a bag worth buying?

We are never huge fans of nylon bags at PurseBlog. In certain situations I can completely understand why it is the best option, but typically, it is not a material I would choose. Yet sometimes a designer finds a way to combine nylon with other materials and make it appealing. That is what the Marc Jacobs Rubik Quilted Debbie Mini Bag brings us, a combination of materials on a cute design.

We are Marc Jacobs fan girls (ok, mostly Amanda is) and many of his designs are both playful and beautiful. The mini bag style is very on trend right now. But the mini bag is not for everyone. The silhouette on Saks wearing this bag is 5’5″, which can give you an idea how it would look on you. With my being so tall, I tend to stray away from mini bags. But that is all personal preference.

Any other day this review would belong on PurseBlog Savvy, but today it is going right here. Why you ask? Because I love French Bulldogs. I love bulldogs in general (Vlad and I will own an English Bulldog sometime in the near future, they are our love). The little quirky Miss Marc looks all kinds of awkward on the nylon Marc by Marc Jacobs Miss Marc Packables Pouch surrounded by her French Bulldog friends.

I would use this pouch for makeup and toss it in my handbag. Then I would pull this pouch out, and explain to everyone around me my love of bulldogs. It would get to the point of being so annoying that only Amanda and Vlad would listen (they both love bulldogs too). So maybe, I should just buy this, and then while I blog all day I can stare at it myself and smile. Thereby keeping all of you out of my bulldog-loving-long-winded-speech-path. Dimensions are 5″W X 9″H X ¼”D and it is available in fuchsia and twig brown. Buy via Saks for $58.

Let’s get one thing cleared up before we begin: if the whole Marc Jacobs/Chanel “resemblance” issue over the past several years makes you have a rage blackout, this might not be the post (or the bag) for you. If the appropriation of quilted leather and chains strikes you as more of a winking homage than an out-and-out ripoff, then keep reading. Either way, if you get to the end of this post and are feeling a little stabby, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

For those of you that dig Jacobs’ Chanel-reminiscent handbags, the news that he’s now making the ever-popular “The Single” minibag in not-so-mini sizes is probably welcome news. One of those new bags is the Marc Jacobs The XL Quilting Shoulder Bag, and as the name would imply, it’s supersized for ease of day-to-day use. Oh, another thing to point out: it costs a couple of grand less than a Chanel Jumbo Classic Flap.

I’ve spent the past couple of days revisiting the Marc Jacobs Imogen Shoulder Bag several times, trying to decide what I think about it. Every time I open its product page to look at it again, my opinion lands somewhere in the chasm between “WTF” and “I see what they did there.”

I’ve decided that I don’t really think that this bag is attractive, which I suppose is a step toward figuring out what my overall opinion of it is. I do think it’s interesting to look at, however, and that may ultimately be more important than attractiveness when it comes to the demographic that Jacobs is trying to reach with this particular piece. Sometimes, having something that’s unlike what most people understand is the objective, even if it means stepping outside the normal bounds of aesthetic pleasure.

Oh dear.

We all know how much I love Marc Jacobs, which just makes it all the more sad when I dislike one of his bags. I’ve tried everything that I know how to do in order to convince myself to love the Marc Jacobs Parachute Stam Bag, but I just can’t do it. I won’t do it.

Real talk: the material out of which this thing is made looks like what you’d get if tinfoil and a garbage bag had a baby. It looks like that’s how it might feel, too. I kind of want to touch it, just out of curiosity, but it’s completely synthetic – will it give me a rash?