I’ve been eyeing the Celine All Soft Shoulder Bag ever since Celine Spring 2013 popped up on the Internet (for Celine newbies, the brand calls its resort collection “spring” and its spring collection “summer”), and now that the line is set to launch in Celine boutiques on Thursday (along with the rest of spring), it seemed only fitting to take a closer look at what makes the bag so appealing. Besides the fact that it’s Celine, of course.
In my view, Celine makes two categories of purses: Celine Bags and Celine It Bags. You can probably guess which ones fall into the latter category – the Luggage Totes and Trapezes of the world, which are highly recognizable and meant not only to do brisk sales, but to increase the brand’s public profile among those who might not be in the market for furry Big Bird pumps. For a brand like Celine, those bags are the quickest route to profitability, and creative director Phoebe Philo is a master at making sure those pieces are in place at whatever company she’s helming.
The other bags are a bit more rank-and-file; simpler, cleaner-lined, less noticeable to someone passing you on the street. The All Soft, with its DNA taken from the successful Celine Cabas Tote, is firmly a part of this second group, and for me, that’s part of its appeal. With these careful color configurations, the bag can be worn with almost anything, and the lack of serious structure means that it’ll likely be very light and easy to carry. I’ll have to wait and see it in person to know for sure, though; according to the staff at the Celine Madison Avenue boutique, the bag will retail for around $2,000 when it debuts on Thursday – the all-leather versions a little lower, the leather and suede versions a little higher. The associate I spoke to declined to give me exact figures in advance of the launch.
