How to Find a Discount Designer Handbag

By Mimi Uei

Pietro Alessandro at eFashionHouse

How do you buy designer handbags? It is difficult to buy discount designer handbags, because so often, handbags are almost always very expensive. Louis Vuitton, for example, never owns any outlet shops, or has any sales. There is a certain prestige in owning a designer handbag, but the price tag often puts people off.

Of course, there are always discount handbags. How do you find them?

There are many ways to find them. One thing you can do, is look for seasonal handbag designs. You are sometimes able to buy a discount designer handbag, because it was last season's pattern. For example, I managed to buy a beautiful, well-made Coach wristlet once for only $30 (at a department store, so it was authentic), because it was a seasonal style. How do you find designer handbags that are seasonal? They are often sold during seasonal sales at department stores and boutiques. If you do not find any, you can always ask the stores about off-season discounts.

Another way to find designer handbags, is to look online. Obviously, there are lots of online sellers that can give you a good price for a handbag. Just make sure that what you buy online is an authentic designer handbag. Online, you can easily buy off-season handbags at a good price. Or, you can probably find a designer handbag that is a classic style, but is still below common retail value.

Of course, please keep in mind that some people may think that off-season handbags are out of style. Certainly, the shelf life of seasonal discount designer handbags is probably shorter than classic designer handbag styles. However, if you have a good sense of fashion and style, and like being unique, there is nothing wrong with having a good off-season handbag.

There are two main ways to find discount designer handbags: one way is during seasonable sales for off season designs. Another way is to go online and search for the deals available.

Discount Designer handbag online shop.

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Are you a bag lady?

Pursuits | Vir Sanghvi

Show off your Hermes Birkin in Shanghai, Singapore or Sharjah and it will always look right

Diamond necklace or designer bag? (Illustration by: Jayachandran / Mint)

Anybody who follows the fashion business will tell you that, these days, the real money is not in the clothes; it is in the accessories. Take the house of Versace. It floundered after the murder of its founder. But it is now back in the black, thanks largely to the success of its handbags, a product that the house was rarely associated with when Gianni was alive. Or take Louis Vuitton. In theory, it’s just one part of the massive LVMH conglomerate but it accounts for the majority of the group’s profits (quite an achievement because LVMH includes Givenchy, Christian Dior, Celine, DKNY, Kenzo as well as Moët et Chandon and Krug Champagne). And Louis Vuitton is all about handbags. It makes some clothes but I doubt if anyone buys them. At the Gucci Group, the jewel in the crown is not the eponymous label (which is a bag company, in essence) but Bottega Veneta whose high quality handbags generate huge profits. A few labels do thrive without accessories (Armani, for instance) but even Chanel has predicated its overseas expansion on make-up and bags.

It’s not difficult to see why the bag market is so attractive to fashion houses. There’s no problem with sizing. They don’t have to decide how much of each product to make in which size—when it comes to handbags, one size fits all. The margins are spectacularly high. At Louis Vuitton, a bag sells in the shops for something like 14 times its manufacturing cost. With lesser labels, prices tend to be 12 times cost.

Then, there’s the international aspect. In the not too distant future, the principal markets for fashion labels will be in Asia (West Asia, Japan, China, the Asian Tiger economies and, eventually, India). Western fashion appeals to White people: to European and American sensibilities. Asians rarely like the clothes and nor do they look good in them. A Japanese woman in Ralph Lauren looks like a shop assistant; an Indian woman in Roberto Cavalli looks like an upmarket call girl and an Arab woman in Valentino looks like…well, she looks like an Arab in Valentino.

Bags get around that problem. Carry a Chanel 2.55 on the streets of Bangkok, Mumbai or Bahrain and the message will be clear: You are rich and have taste. Show off your Hermes Birkin in Shanghai, Singapore or Sharjah and it will always look right. Bags are the ultimate international fashion product. You can sell them anywhere.

But if the accessories boom makes sense for fashion companies, why does it make sense for the consumer? There was a time when even the rich carried expensive but discreet bags. The famous label handbags were few and their cost was related to quality. It takes a craftsman 17 hours to make a Kelly or a Birkin by hand. In the old days, every craftsman who made a Gucci bag had to slip a card with his number into one of the packets. If there was something wrong with the bag, Gucci would send it back to the man who had made it.

Now, Gucci bags are designed on computer and mass-produced (and even when the company was family-run, the decline had begun with the introduction of cheap canvas merchandise). The luxury bags (Hermes mainly) are still made the traditional way and cost as much as a car. But there’s a new range of very, very expensive handbags that are essentially industrial products. Even these bags go for upwards of a lakh. And such is the demand that it is the Rs 2 lakh and Rs 3 lakh bags that have the longest waiting lists

Plus, there is the phenomenon of the It bag. Each season, fashion editors breathlessly announce what the new “must-have” bags are. Not to possess these bags means you are hopelessly out of date. Worse still, to carry last year’s It bag is a fashion faux pas. Even if you spent a fortune on the Mombasa or the Dior Saddle because the fashion editors told you to, they now moulder on your arm like decaying corpses.

I’ve always tried to work out why women will spend so much on a bag when they could buy a piece of jewellery with the money instead. At the lower end of the fashion pyramid, it is easy to explain: People like the thrill of carrying an instantly recognizable designer product such as a Louis Vuitton monogrammed bag. But why do rich women, who have nothing to prove, splash out, year after year, for one of Marc Jacob’s limited edition Louis Vuitton bags?

I have some theories. To wear a designer garment, you need a certain kind of figure. No matter how much money you spend on a Prada outfit, nothing will help if you have a fat ass or if rolls of lard line your navel. With a bag, there’s no problem. You can be old, fat, ugly, short, misshapen or whatever but the bag will stand out on its own.

The corollary to this theory is that almost everybody who can afford designer clothes in India is too fat or big-hipped to carry them off. Go to the Louis Vuitton store in Delhi’s Oberoi hotel and watch the fat Punjabi ladies peel off notes from wads of cash. Can you really see them wearing high fashion? Or go to the elegant Chanel store at The Imperial. How many Indian women could wear those clothes? Is it any wonder that they all buy bags and glasses?

The second theory has to do with gifting. Assume you want to spend a little money on a friend or a lover. What can you buy her? Clothes require fittings as do shoes: You buy them blind, at your peril. Jewellery is intimate; it makes a statement. Far easier, therefore, to buy an expensive handbag. If it’s from a trendy label and one of the season’s It bags, then it is a safe choice and it’s hard to go wrong. Show me a vaguely fashionable woman who says she does not appreciate the gift of an expensive bag and I’ll show you a liar.

It is these two factors, I suspect, that keep the fashion companies in business. From 2001 to 2004, the luxury goods market increased by 1.2% per year. But sales of leather goods increased by 7.5% each year in the same period.

Since then, the trend has gathered more steam. The big labels may make clothes but the profits will come from bags—as long as there are enough rich old bags around to buy them!

What's in your bag? What's on your mind?

You see her everywhere, carrying a Hermes Birkin or wearing the lastest fashion accesory. What's in this Marc Jacobs bag? It's Victoria Beckham, of course! What else would you expect? Perfect little photo and perfect advertisement.

Here's the scoop on MARC JACOBS taken from Vogue . . .

With a timely ability to design what the fashion pack want to wear even before they know what to want, Marc Jacobs has become one of the world's hottest and hippest designers. Nicknamed the Guru of Grunge by Women's Wear Daily, Jacobs created a phenomenon in the Nineties when he sent models parading down the catwalk with a Seattle-inspired, rugged mix and match sensibility of army boots and plaid shirts paired with floral dresses and unfinished seams.

Born in New York City in 1963, Jacobs decided he wanted to become a designer while at grammar school. His sister taught him how to embroider his jeans and his grandmother, who he credits with being "the biggest influence in [his] life", taught him how to knit. At 15, Jacobs worked as a stockboy in New York's trendy Charivari boutique and it was there that he was introduced to Perry Ellis who "embodied cool to me. He had long hair; he didn't wear a suit and tie, and he made funky clothes that were a big success. He gave me a lot of hope." After graduating from the High School for Art and Design in 1981 and following Ellis' advice, Jacobs studied at the Parsons School of Art and Design in New York where he won the Perry Ellis Golden Thimble award in 1984. While at Parsons, he designed a small collection of hand-knit sweaters for the Charivari boutique.

The following year, Jacobs was hired as vice president of womenswear at Perry Ellis. While there, he designed the infamous but timely grunge collection that was triumphed by those in fashion circles from Kal Ruttenstein, head of merchandising at Bloomingdales, to US Vogue editor Anna Wintour who said of the collection, "You can't change fashion by parading 25 navy suits down the runway. Marc isn't about investment dressing. Yet, when you go to the showroom and see the clothes, you realise they're eminently wearable." At the time, Jacobs described the collection as his best ever, having wanted to visually translate the clash and noise of the music [of Pearl Jam and Nirvana] into pattern and colour. However, Jacobs was to be too radical for Perry Ellis and the American sportswear house laid him off in 1992. He went on to win the Women's Designer of the Year award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America that same year.

In 1994, Jacobs, along with his business partner Robert Duffy, launched his highly anticipated eponymous line onto the catwalk for the first time on his 31st birthday. He created quite a stir when the $10,000-a-day supermodel gang, including Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista, walked the catwalk for free in support of their friend. The collection was a European take on colour, texture and silhouette and teamed mini skirts with fishnet tights and white duchess satin jackets or acid green rubber coats over pinstripes. The look was Jacobs take on post-grunge glamour, and was inspired by "a woman who brings home the bacon, but also fries it up in the pan".

In 1997, Jacobs was appointed creative director of Louis Vuitton where he developed the company's first ready-to-wear line. His first collection for the Parisian house saw models in white minimalist pieces devoid of accessories or the even the famous LV logo. In 2001, Jacobs launched his more affordable diffusion line, Marc, that rapidly became a must-have label for young urban hipsters. Marc by Marc Jacobs has proved so popular that it is one of the first diffusion lines that has threatened to overshadow the mainline. By 2003, Jacob's company offered a full range of products from perfume and eyewear to accessories and shoes, and he had opened flagship stores on both coasts of the United States.

Jacobs has succeeded in designing seasonal must-haves for his own two lines, while keeping the Louis Vuitton label modern and contemporary. At LV, he has been triumphant in revamping the famous accessory line and has collaborated with the likes of Steven Sprouse, who designed the ever-popular graffiti bag for spring 2001, Julie

collaborated with the likes of Steven Sprouse, who designed the ever-popular graffiti bag for spring 2001, Julie Verhoeven, who created patchwork collage bags, and graphic artist Takashi Murakami, who contributed to the bubblegum-cute accessories for spring/summer 2003. His designs continue to be admired on the catwalk and continually mimicked on the high streets.

A great self-promoter and not one to shy away from the headlines, Jacobs clothes have been seen on the fabulous and super-stylish. Sarah Jessica Parker wore his pretty frocks while pregnant and Winona Ryder who infamously borrowed his pieces from Saks Fifth Avenue in 2001, wore his demure designs to her trial and subsequently appeared in his spring/summer 2003 ad campaign shot by Juergen Teller.

During his studies at Parsons, Jacobs frequented the notorious Area club in New York and continues to use the spirit of that era as inspiration for his collections: It's about a constant re-celebration of what turns us on," he explains. "Youth, energy, vitality, freedom... not in this pining for the past way, but again just constantly celebrating that its energy is still relevant."

Marc Jacobs spends most of his time in Paris, where he lives with his Bull Terrier Alfred.

MARC JACOBS designer handbag in eggshell colored leather is called "little lou."

Measures approximately 9.5 W x 8.5 H with a 2 inch depth. The polished brass chain strap measures about 28 inches long with a 9.5 inch drop. March Jacobs is embossed on the polished brass hardware. Purse is trimmed in a brown leather. Zip top closure with a large brass and leather pull tag. Fully lined interior with one zippered pocket.