Images via Vogue.com

The Givenchy Antigona Satchel is such an under-appreciated handbag. The design is exceptionally crisp and minimal, it comes in a variety of sizes, materials and colors, it’s Givenchy, fer chrissakes. It’s far superior to the Givenchy Nightingale (says me), but yet, it’s not quite as well known. With Givenchy’s killer slate of Antigonas to come, Spring 2012 might change that.

With this lineup, there’s a little something for everyone. Exotics, stitched details, brights-and-neutrals colorblocking, mirrored patent leather. The Antigona takes well to all of them because of its immaculate, well-edited structure; there’s never a metaphorical hair out of place on this bag. Check out the versions to come after the jump or shop Givenchy via Barneys right now. (more…)

A Roger Vivier Spring 2008 archival bag via Vogue.com

Roger Vivier is a company that never does quite what’s expected when it comes to handbag an shoe design, and for the launch of its online store, Vivier has chosen to go a bit left-of-center from your standard online shopping outpost. Instead of vending current-season pieces like every other brand on the planet, starting in September, RogerVivier.com will allow fans of the brand to shop must-haves from seasons past that are still available in the Vivier archive.

According to Vogue, all the pieces will be new and unworn limited-production items from seasons past, so if you’ve been kicking yourself for half a decade about a beautiful brocade evening bag that you should have bought in 2006, this might be your second chance for fashion redemption. But the better question is, why don’t more brands do this? (more…)

There are plenty of brands known for bags that make disappointing shoes (and vice versa, certainly), so it’s no small feat when a company takes its footwear and successfully uses it as an inspiration for handbags. And yet, that’s just what Tod’s has done with the Tod’s Signature Collection. The bags’ embossed pattern is an ode to the texture that forms the bottom of the company’s famous driving shoes, and it gives the brand what it’s been lacking: A logo bag of sorts. (more…)

When Style.com Fashion Director Candy Pratts Price speaks, fashion people listen, which means that anything she included in her Vogue.com list of Fall 2011’s 45 most desirable accessories just got an instant injection of cool on top of the considerable amount that it probably already had. For the article’s bags, Pratts Price picked everything from glossy patent daytime satchels to tiny evening clutches festooned with animal images, and surely you’ll covet at least one of her selections.

You’ll probably also recognize a few of the choices from our coverage of the season’s accessories, and a few more are off-runway pieces that we’re all seeing for the first time. Do you agree with Candy’s choices? I love the cherry red Marc Jacobs satchel and have since I first saw it on the runway, and we all know how I feel about that green crocodile Valextra clutch. The Givenchy box evening bag, on the other hand? I’ll pass. Let us know your picks, and if Vogue skipped anything important, in the comments. (more…)

EBay: It has everything! That nail polish that you should have bought two years ago but didn’t, the pillow shams that match your duvet cover for half the retail price, an unlocked iPhone 4 that you shouldn’t bid on because it’s a scam, it’s all there. And now, it has the Hermes Birkin. That’s right – not an Hermes Birkin, THE Hermes Birkin. Owned by Jane Birkin herself, who famously inspired the bag on a flight in 1984. Birkin is auctioning her iconic bag to support relief efforts in Japan. But because Birkin is so very French and bohemian and eccentric, this bag is not without a few modifications. (more…)

If you followed along with our coverage of Fall 2011’s runway handbags, you might have noticed the same thing that I did – even more so than most years, designers had models clutching their purses in any manor of non-intuitive ways. The incomparable Lynn Yaeger also took note of the styling trend, but she took her curiosity one step further – Yaeger spoke to body language expert Dr. Lillian Glass and wrote a column for Vogue about what our preferred method of handbag-carrying says about us.

Applying those kinds of theories to runway styling is probably a specious practice; fashion shows often have little if anything to do with how fashion is actually supposed to be worn or how customers will wear it once it’s in their closets. But Yaeger’s intent is interesting, in light of how idiosyncratic and exacting some of us can be when it comes time to buy a handbag. Are you a shoulder-carrier? Do you prefer the crook of your arm? Or do you carry your bags by hand? And finally, how does that influence your choice of which bags to buy? (more…)

Unfortunately, when it comes to midseason collections, most designers don’t see fit to throw accessory-lovers a photographic bone. Because the shows aren’t held together with any type of unifying event, brands release their own media images instead of allowing outside photographers, and outside photographers almost always do a better job of showing us the bags and shoes. We end up getting the short shrift when all media outlets are given the same photo set.

Because Louis Vuitton is a company founded on leather goods, though, it does a better job than most at making sure that its bags are front and center. We have all of the bags from Louis Vuitton’s Pre-Fall 2011 collection, plus two ornate feather fans that probably aren’t bags but I will continue hope might be until expressly told otherwise. (Please, Louis Vuitton, let them be bags.) Full photos, after the jump. (more…)

Megs and I have an odd ability: We talk about things, and they happen. It’s inexplicable, and there have been too many instances to completely enumerate here (Example: we joked that I would end up on the plane with a rapper on my last flight from Atlanta to New York, and I then found myself seated next to a guy from Public Enemy), but trust me, it happens. We’re magic, but we don’t know how to control it.

Recently, we found ourselves discussing a $16,000 partially sueded-croc Celine Luggage Tote that Megs had seen in the brand’s Bal Harbour boutique, and we both agreed that Celine was missing an opportunity by not offering a Luggage Tote made entirely out of regular crocodile. Lo and behold, photos of Celine Pre-Fall 2011 gave us a look at exactly the bag we were hoping to see. And if a partially croc Luggage Tote costs 16 grand, I don’t even want to speculate how much this one will be. Larger photo, after the jump.

UPDATE: We’ve heard this bag may be stamped instead of real croc, and if that’s the case, one of these beauties may indeed be in my future. (more…)

You may or may not have liked Fendi’s Spring 2011 handbag collection, but you can’t argue that it was what fashion industry people call “directional.” Instead of merely designing safe, pretty accessories, Fendi’s handbags gave us a new way to think about combining color, structure and texture.

Vogue.com chose this Fendi Multicolor Woven Clutch to illustrate spring’s colorblocking trend in its Accessories Blackbook, but upon close examination, the design is interesting for more than just its use of color. (more…)