One of the stores we were drawn into, like the hunter to the prey, was the Prada store on Rue Royale facing the Place De La Madeleine in Paris’ fashion strip #1. What immediately poked in our sides was the colorful new spring collection for ’05, which not only builds on the very successful classic black nylon bags they’ve carried so far, but emerges with vibrant colors and swank designs.
The bag we immediately fell in passionate love with was the “Country” Shoulder Bag. The actual bag we saw was not the leather version in orange or red, but a cloth canvas version of the same design, in darker green. This bag does not seem to be available in the US yet. The hand on the wallet was twitching big time, the bag would have gone for 750 Euros, the polite french sales person pointed out an estimated $1,000 charge on the credit card. The pictured leather version for the US goes for little over $1,200. My heart is still pumping like a diesel engine when thinking of how gorgeous this handbag was. What we also noticed was that Prada is trying to be playfully futuristic with keychain-like accessories like mini robots (even as robot design bag) and other gizmos that were dangling off every showcased bag in their store. Like other companies are doing the whole scarf thing, Prada goes their own way.
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