At PurseBlog, we understand that spring’s trend toward bright colorblocking can be intimidating, particularly when you decide to do it in a minimal way a la Jil Sander Spring 2011. In those kinds of ensembles, there’s nothing to hide behind – it’s just you and your colorful pants, out there for the world to see. Depending on your personality, that thought might either be exhilarating or terrifying.

The more I look through the handbags from Chloe Fall 2011, the more I wonder who the Chloe girl is. I also wonder if Chloe’s accessories designers know the answer to that question, or if they’ve chosen instead to hope that they can make everyone feel like a Chloe girl by creating a collection that eschews a unifying aesthetic in favor of encompassing a group of ideas that are seemingly not related.

And this Wednesday I am wanting to add the Fendi Silvana Flap Top Bag to my spring wardrobe.

The luxury accessories market is crowded with seasoned competitors all vying for consumer attention (and consumer dollars), which can often make it well nigh impossible for a new handbag line to turn heads, particularly the heads of people whose job it is to look at handbags all day. (Ahem, yours truly.) Somehow, the Reed Krakoff Inside Out Leather and Snakeskin Tote managed to not only make me take a second look, but it made me do so by being inventive in a way that’s not only quite unique, but still totally subtle and functional at the same time.

You may or may not have liked Fendi’s Spring 2011 handbag collection, but you can’t argue that it was what fashion industry people call “directional.” Instead of merely designing safe, pretty accessories, Fendi’s handbags gave us a new way to think about combining color, structure and texture.

Vogue.com chose this Fendi Multicolor Woven Clutch to illustrate spring’s colorblocking trend in its Accessories Blackbook, but upon close examination, the design is interesting for more than just its use of color.

Last Thursday on the new episode of Project Runway, we got something that all fans of the show are well used to: a challenge where they pretend that the hair or the makeup totally matters so that they can have the Garnier or L’Oreal people on to shill for a minute or two, and then they completely ignore the hair or makeup unless it’s an epic fail.

This week, dear readers, Project Runway had one of those oh-so-sublime “alternative materials” challenges. Our top ten (really, they were celebrating that? Top ten is not even making it halfway…) designers were sent to a hardware store by Princess Michael Kors and told to gather enough random objects to somehow make clothing, but then when judging came around, the judges couldn’t decide if they really wanted the designers to turn something hard into something soft or not.

Yay, new Gryson! I feel like it’s been a while since we’ve seen new bags from them, and although I haven’t adored their previous collections, I think they have a ton of potential to innovate and make great things. And I think I was right, if the new iteration of the Gryson Lola Tote is any indication. Dark pink and black is one of my favorite color combinations, and the bold colorblocking on this tote (it almost looks like it’d hang like a hobo when worn…a tobo!) makes it wearable in more ways than if it had been combined as a pattern or in a more intricate way.