My love for Alexander Wang is not new – it’s actually a long love that has built over the years. After the craze following the Rocco, Alexander Wang continued to churn out bags that became instant hits. One such bag is the Prisma tote, I always saw it but never thought much of it, until now. I’ve been craving adding a simple tote to my handbag repertoire and the more I see the Alexander Wang Prisma Tote, the more I like it and want one myself.

If you’ve spent any appreciable amount of time shopping for handbags, either online or in stores (and I think that it’s a pretty good bet that you have), then you’re likely familiar with the utterly enormous line of not just handbags, but small leather goods,
accessories, tech accouterments and any number of other tiny and not-so-tiny things that one can buy and put in his or her bag.

[Editor's Note: Everyone welcome our new intern Katherine!]

With summer slowly coming to a close (tear, tear) I am glad to say I fulfilled one of my biggest tasks of the summer season: finding the perfect back-to-school bag. This semester, my bag of choice is the Dooney & Bourke Large Zipper Pocket Sac.

As a commuter student in the city who has a part-time job in addition to interning here at the fabulous PurseBlog headquarters, you would be surprised at all that I can fit in my bag.

The perennial cool kids of Opening Ceremony have taken one more step into the accessories realm: just this week, they’ve launched their first in-house bag line, which feels like a long time coming. As you might expect, the bags ring up at a contemporary price point and they look like exactly the sort of thing that Opening Ceremony’s hipper-than-thou clientele wants to carry when their It Bags start to feel overexposed.

The line between inspiration and imitation is wafer thin in the fashion industry. Any time we post something about a bag that looks like another bag, no matter whether the post is positive or negative, a whole host of people chime in to both agree and disagree in seemingly equal measures (and with plenty of enthusiasm for their points of view).

I love when a brand steps into the forefront of the accessories business and secures its place as a new designer to be coveted. This is precisely what 3.1 Phillip Lim has done with his handbag line, and now it seems everyone is catching on. Whether it is a PVC Pashili tote or the 31 Hour collection, the brand has moved into the contemporary (or, more accurately, the premium-contemporary) handbag spotlight.

As much as we love to ogle the most expensive handbags and accessories on the planet, those of us on the PurseBlog team understand that moderation is important. For almost all bag lovers, including us, going bananas and buying a bunch of four-figure (or higher) bags per season is just not a wise idea when you consider all the other things vying for our wallets’ attention.

If you’ve been in the market for a contemporary bag any time in the last five years or so, you’re likely quite familiar with a couple of Foley + Corinna bags already: the City and Jetsetter totes. Those bags have been the brands bread and butter for years, and by all indications, they continue to sell like those proverbial hotcakes that everyone seems to buy in some make-believe world where people eat carbs.

By now, you know the drill. We think Fridays are the perfect day for online shopping (somehow, it’s the day that I end up doing most of mine), and because we love you guys and we aren’t afraid to be service-y, we’ve done the honors of scouring the Internet and coming up with the Best Bag Deals of the Week, just like we do every week.

Cole Haan is one of those brands whose bags I’ve always wanted to like but never really have. They always seemed directed at a slightly older, slightly less fashion-conscious customer, and while that’s certainly fine, it never gave me or anyone I know much to get excited about. Most brands who find themselves in that categorization eventually try to break free from it, though, and it was only a matter of time until Cole Haan took the necessary steps.