Bag Trends

Ok, so we’ve spent plenty of time lately talking about brights, neons and other assorted eye-assaulting colors that you might want to wear for spring. While Megs and I love and adore those kinds of bags, we realize that they may not be for every, either in a practical or an aesthetic sense. If you’d like something a tad more neutral but you still want to update your bag wardrobe for spring, you’re in luck – snakeskin is still the texture that everyone wants to have.

We’ve covered the all-snake look in the past, but for many women, a bag that mixes snakeskin and regular leather is a more demure option that allows a bag to be acceptable in a work environment where it might have otherwise been a bit too showy. Plus, mixing textures is also a big trend, so you’re getting a little bang for your buck here. (Your metaphorical buck, at least. Stuff’s still expensive.) And yes, we included one bright option. It’s almost spring, I couldn’t help it.

Every year, Pantone picks a new color as a PR stunt to have us all talk about Pantone and colors for a week or two. Every year, it totally works. It’s a gimmick with staying power! Most years, the color selections seem a bit…off, at least by fashion standards. The last two have been a dark teal and a disappointingly middling shade of pink, neither of which had anything to do with the neon-a-gogo mood of the style industry in 2010 and 2011. For 2012, Pantone managed to get it right – the bright, saturated, orange-y reds that we’ve seen all over the runways for the past two seasons (and that were especially popular for Resort and Spring 2012) is 2012′s Color of the Year.

It’s technically called Tangerine Tango, but I see a lot more red than orange when I look at Pantone’s official swatch. Almost all of my friends have lamented this shade as a difficult one to wear, but that’s where being a handbag person comes in handy – you can wear it all you want, and since the color doesn’t sit near your face, it doesn’t matter if it’s flattering to your skin tone. Naturally, we have six handbag options in red-orange so that you can get a jump on 2012.

When it became clear that ivory and pastels were going to be one of the biggest trends of 2012, I felt a bit disheartened at first. Very light colors can be a bit challenging to most skin tones, much more so than brights or jewel tones. Since we’re all basically self-interested people, I feel as though I should admit that they look particularly bad on me, which makes it especially hard to embrace even a subtle and ladylike trend like the largely cool-toned (it makes them less retro!) pastels of the Spring 2012 runways.

That’s the beauty of handbags, though. If you want to embrace a color trend without having to wear it next to your face for an entire day, accessories are the perfect way to do it; when a piece is viewed mostly against the colors of the rest of your outfit, whether or not it looks good on your particular skin tone becomes something of a non-issue. After the jump, we have six of our pastel picks so that you can start wearing the trend before spring’s bags even hit stores.

Gaging a trend’s lifespan can be a precarious endeavor, particularly when that trend is born out of something like leopard print, which is an innate classic whether its haters want to admit it or not. It’s been around for ages, and even though it tends to fall in and out of favor cyclically, it will never leave the style world entirely. For leopard lovers like me, that’s a beautiful thing.

Over the past couple of seasons, though, leopard has been pushed by every brand from Givenchy to the Gap. I find this Yves Saint Laurent Cabas Chyc Tote in leopard haircalf exceptionally beautiful, but thanks to overexposure, it does occur to me that some of you might disagree. We’ve set up a handy-dandy poll to measure your leopard fatigue after the jump, or you can buy this bag via Nordstrom for $2795.

All images via Vogue.com

Even with the rapidly changing landscape of fashion criticism and American Vogue‘s relative conservatism compared to its European counterparts, the magazine and its website are still first and foremost among the industry’s most important publications. When Vogue says that something’s important, designers, buyers and consumers pay attention, and Vogue.com recently posted its picks\ for the season’s key accessories trends.

If you followed along with our Fashion Week coverage, you probably noticed some of these things too – Vogue‘s calling them Modern Embellishment, Transparency, Athleticism, Ladylike Pastels and The Skin of the Season. We’ve got their picks for which of Spring 2012′s bags best illustrate those trends after the jump, and we’d like you to let us know if there’s any look that you’re particularly impatient to get your hands on in the comments. Pay particular attention to the bags that could fit easily into more than one of these categories – those are the styles to watch come spring.

Rochas Giallo Tote Bag, $1065. Rochas Borsa R18 Sporco Bag, $1695. Both via Saks.

Despite the fact that I have chosen maximalism as my overarching aesthetic theme, I have a healthy respect for those who do minimal and do it well. During the days of Olivier Theyskens, Rochas was never accused of embracing minimalism, but now that the brand’s creative vision has changed hands, the brand’s most widely available foray into handbags yet has lines so straight that my back aches just looking at them. Would you carry something like the Rochas Giallo Tote Bag (left) or the Rochas Borsa R18 Sporco Bag, or do you want your bags to be a little bit more detailed?

You’ve probably heard much being made over both crimson and cobalt as the colors to wear for fall, but the accessories that I’ve seen over the past few days make me wonder: Is orange going to be the real star of the show? Have we all ignored the obvious winner?

I was already planning to put together a roundup of orange bags for fall yesterday when Proenza Schouler tweeted the above picture from W magazine of the brand’s PS11 in a lovely shade of pumpkin. We all know that the PS11 is my personal pick of the litter, but if you’d like to go in a different (but still orange) direction for fall, check out the rest of our picks after the jump.