It wasn’t so long ago that $1,500 was a sweet spot for designer bags. In the mid-2000s, sough-after bags like the Chloé Paddington retailed for prices near that magic number, and even as recently as 2010, the Céline Luggage Tote debuted at $1,750. It now costs nearly $3,000, despite being exactly the same bag it was six years ago and the rate of inflation not supporting that kind of surge, but hey, luxury prices are kind of made up anyway. That’s a bargain we’ve all made at this point.
As absurd as it feels to say it, finding a solid bag that feels like a good value for $1,500 can be kind of tricky in this, the year of our lord 2016. Top-tier designers usually position the all-leather versions of their most important bags around the $2,000 mark, which means $1,500 gets you a lot of minis, crossbodies and bags made primarily of a material that isn’t leather.
To better evaluate which brands are giving those with a $1,500 bag budget the most bang for their buck, we looked through 20 big brands’ current offerings to find the design we felt was the best value in their under-$1,500 inventory. Below, check out the results of our search–we’d enumerate the winners and losers, but we think they speak for themselves. (Looking for something at a lower price point? We did the same thing at $1,000 not long ago.)