he passes up bags with too many nail heads or grommets. “Too busy,” she says.
She’s looking for hip and functional bags with clean lines and good construction. She prefers bags that are lightweight and labels that aren’t carried by competitors.
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She stays away from the supersized-bags that have become popular of late, saying that Baltimore women - who don’t walk the streets like New York women - prefer their handbags more compact. She also avoids other characteristics, such as suede, and black bags with white stitching.
“Baltimore doesn’t like white stitching,” Levitas says. “I don’t know why.”
After the two trade shows in New York - the first one at the Chelsea Piers is more high-end than the other, at the Javits Center - Levitas has ordered close to 250 handbags to come into her store from August to September.
This will make up Gotta Have Bags’ fall line of selections and styles.
At the end of all the foraging, she is exhausted and slightly anxious.
“You only know that you’ve bought right,” Levitas says, yo-yo bouncing a bag to see how much it weighs, “when it walks out the door.”
It is the driving question behind most buyers’ purchases: Will this handbag sell?
“This [job] can be chancy,” says Jodi L. Brodie, who buys the fashion-forward handbags for Treasure House in Pikesville, as she rides the tour bus back to Baltimore from a day at the shows. “If we bring it in, we’re making a statement saying that we believe in it and this is what we think is important for the season. Some things work, and some things don’t.”
In Baltimore, customers tend to be “safer” than many buyers would like.
“In a way, we’re a bit provincial,” says Lola Abt Hahn, buyer for handbags and accessories at Octavia in Pikesville. “They love fashion, but … ” She chooses her words carefully, not wanting to paint too bleak a picture of Baltimore.
Abt Hahn says she loved Lockheart, a new line she discovered at Accessorie Circuit, the higher-end of the two shows Levitas attended. But she isn’t sure if Baltimore’s women - who prefer recognizable brands - would see what she saw in the fanciful, embellished line of leather bags,.
“If I carry this new line that I just saw,” she says, “it’s so edgy and so fabulous. I don’t know. I would carry it, but I don’t think I can sell it.”
Abt Hahn and Brodie have many of the same customers - women with means and a real sense of high fashion.
Octavia, for instance, carries designer Marc Jacobs’ highly sought-after status bags. And Treasure House was one of the first to introduce Kooba - the latest “It” label - to Baltimore.
Levitas’ customers, on the other hand, want style and flair, but with a slightly lower price tag. So Levitas’ days traipsing up and down convention center aisles are filled with visions of dollar signs.
Botkier, a rising star in the handbag world, required buyers to purchase at least 10 bags. Fine for big department stores. Too much for Levitas.
Keeping costs low is harder this year -rising gas costs have worked their way even into the price of handbags.
“In the last two months, things have gone up 14 percent” for manufacturers, says Glen Teres, designer for Borsetta International, where Levitas buys many of her bags. His suppliers are “not absorbing those oil prices.”