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.”
Louis Vuitton is a name recognized throughout the world. Known for their fabulous design and quality product. One must ask how did Louis Vuitton handbags come to be?
In the early 1800s Louis Vuitton trained as a luggage packer for a wealthy Parisian family. He was then appointed by Napoleon III to pack the dresses of the Empress Eugenie. Little did he know this would be the start of his rise to fame.
Because of his extensive luggage knowledge, Louis Vuitton began designing luggage for the wealthy who traveled. His first invention was to design luggage that was flat and therefore easy to stack in railway carriages.
It gained popularity at lightening speed. It didn’t take long before his competition was copying his design. Soon after Louis Vuitton marked his luggage with distinctive stripes and checkerboard patterns.
In 1854 the Louis Vuitton business came to be, as luggage began to be replaced with Vuitton’s ideas for handbags. Who better to design women’s handbags than someone who was an expert in luggage.
Originally the Noe bags carried 5 bottles of champagne. To Louis Vuitton’s surprise the Noe bag was extremely popular, and it wasn’t long before wealthy woman began to carry this elegant bag.
The Damier Canvas design debuted in 1888. In 1896 the monogram design was launched in an effort to counteract the replicas his competitors were marketing. The monogram logo was made of an intersection of the initials LV, finished with a curved beige diamond and 4 point star intes.
Still today, Louis Vuitton is recognized for its high quality purse. At the factory level, if a purse does not meet the Vuitton standards it is destroyed.
Louis Vuitton has been in business for an amazing 3 centuries and continues to be fore front in the hand bag industry.
They are flashy, hot and very in for the season. Metallic, sequence and don’t forget the faux fur handbags. Just take a look at a crowd and you will see quite a collection of each of these three. They are not hard to spot and definitely make heads turn. Which head turning style do you like to carry this season?
Let’s start with the flashiest of them all, sequence. They are everywhere and everyone is carrying them. They do seem to be a bigger hit with the younger scene. They come in an array of colors as well as sequence styles. Carry them with any outfit and they’ll dress it up no matter what the look. Do be careful, the looks you get may only be on your handbag and not on you. If you want your great outfit to stand out, I don’t recommend carrying one of these handbags.
Metallic is all the rage also. Just wait for the holiday parties and you will see an explosion of these. They come in many different colors but bronze definitely tops the list. There will be the gold rush in December for all those fancy outfits. Gold is being paired with black and also brown. That black little dress is going to look fabulous with the metallic evening bag and the big beaded necklaces.
Now don’t forget the faux fur bags. Some stand out very much but not as much as the sequence and metallics. There are plenty of faux fur trimmed jackets, tops and boots out there. The faux fur handbag will set off the ensemble. Some are a bit on the wild side and others are just really neat looking. As long as they don’t make a roar, these are the tamest out there of all three.
Sequence, metallic and faux fur, get them while they are hot!
