She buys pieces from small companies, ranging from $18 to about $200 wholesale, prices she says her customers will not balk at.

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Bigger stores, with bigger budgets, don’t have to be so nitpicky.

Saks Fifth Avenue, for example, has four handbag buyers to shop for 54 stores, and most are concerned about presenting a “point-of-view” for each store, says Moore of Saks.

“Of course, we’d like to have a touch of everything in every store,” he says, “but that’s not realistic.”

So large flagship Saks stores, such as in Washington, New York and Houston, have selections that are broad, varied and “fairly high-end,” Moore says. Medium-sized stores, say in St. Louis or Columbus, Ohio, have somewhat of a more casual feel, with fewer choices. Small stores, such as in Santa Barbara, Calif., or Greenwich, Conn., have scaled-down, more personalized perspectives.

“Greenwich is pretty much all designer,” Moore says, “and Fort Myers, [Fla.], is more casual, very young and fresh.”

Bigger stores also buy bags much further in advance than specialty shops. While buyers from boutiques are looking to stock for fall, Saks’ buyers are ordering for next spring.

And department store buyers rarely, if ever, put in orders at accessories trade shows. Instead, they see what’s new there and may make appointments to order from showrooms - organized representatives of various labels.

Levitas visits showrooms, as well, of labels she knows best, where sales reps work more closely with her to tailor her selections for her customers.

But that is for another day.

On this day, she will shop the shows, up and down the aisles, hunting for the perfect handbag.

And she won’t get back on the bus for Baltimore until she’s found it.

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.”

She has armed herself with only a few tools: a map of the booths in the mammoth exhibition site, a pen, comfortable shoes and a keen eye for beauty, usefulness and style.

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Like hundreds of others who will descend on the trade show on this day, Levitas is a hunter of sorts, on the prowl for the must-have of the season - handbags.

“It’s a big category right now,” Lincoln Moore, vice president and divisional merchandise manager at Saks Fifth Avenue, says of handbags. “It’s kind of the customers’ signposts.”

Handbags are so important these days that it makes Levitas’ job that much more important. But her work is often unrecognized by most everyday shoppers.

Buyers do the preliminary shopping, picking the items that you one day will pick and choose from.

At two of the more popular fairs, attended by hundreds of exhibitors, Levitas spots a few unusual pieces to put in her shop window, to draw in customers, such as an across-the-body pouch, from new designer Sobella, with a detachable strap that can be made into a necklace. But she also sees style in basics: black satchels, brown hobos, clutches, dainty evening bags.

For Levitas, that style-spotting talent is part experience - from nearly 40 years in the handbag business - and part gut feeling.

“I am very opinionated about what I like and don’t like,” says Levitas, who had a partner, Linda Segal, to bounce ideas off of, but is now sole buyer since Segal’s death last fall. “If I don’t see anything by just scanning, I won’t go in [to a booth].”

And in six hours, Levitas does pass up many a booth, for various reasons: too expensive, too dowdy, too cheap-looking, too glitzy.

Multiple times a year, she does this, spending hours on her feet, scouring exhibition booths for new inventory to fill her small boutique. Through the day, she breaks only once for a half-hour lunch.

“I have to see everything there is to see,” says Levitas. “I can’t miss anything. And I don’t have a lot of time.”

At the trade shows, buyers converge on each small booth and instantly go to work.

Levitas is astoundingly decisive, despite salespeople’s sugary spiels. And she has no poker face.

She turns up her nose. Frowns her face. If she loves something, she coos.

Hour after hour. Handbag after handbag. Walking, peering, weighing, feeling.

At the Tocca booth, many bags were about $220 wholesale - the price buyers pay for merchandise - which means they’d cost her customers twice that or more.

Levitas liked the bags, but bit her bottom lip at the price, and left the booth without buying.

At Y&S, she picks up a hobo bag and puts it back.

“Everybody’s got a hobo,” she says.

At about 2.30pm on Friday (May 5th) the elderly lady was unloading her trolley in Somerfield car par on the South Esplanade, pictured.

A dark blue car drove past her slowly and the driver grabbed her handbag which was on her shopping trolley.

The suspect is described as a skinny white man, aged 20-30 with short dark hair. Police are appealing for anyone who witnessed the incident to contact them.

They are particularly keen to trace the occupants of a old dirty white camper van which was following the suspect’s vehicle.

Johnson wrote “Ladies’ Vintage Accessories” (Collector Books, 2000), and is a whiz at dating objects. She owns a huge collection of purses, as well as shoes, parasols, aprons and hats. For this event, she’ll discuss the care, cleaning and dating of vintage purses from the 1800s to the present.

Cost is $20 per person, and pre-registration is required. To register, or for more information, contact Rebecca Morrison-Peck, 360-686-3482 or e-mail at peck@pacifier.com.

Morrison-Peck owns Lacings in Yacolt, a business specializing in creating historical-clothing reproductions. Lacings, which is sponsoring Johnson’s visit, offers year-round classes in a wide variety of historical costuming techniques and textile-related subjects.

“We are still deep into the bias cut and Grecian look. If you see the Golden Globe Awards and the SAG Awards the women are all basically wearing one dress bias cut, Grecian looking, goddess dresses,” said promoter David Ornstein.

Ornstein also said, “I think the 70’s and the 80’s are the hottest thing.”

Speaking of all things Greek, owner of the vintage shop Psyche’s Tear, Suzanne Pettit, also discovered that particular styles in the 70’s and 80’s sell.

“Particularly 80’s stuff is really becoming hot although it’s interesting that the stuff that I sold here today were some 30’s and 40’s handbags that I had. But the other thing to think of is… style wise the 70’s was basically a bit of a repeat of the 30’s,” said Pettit.

With so many dealers selling designer vintage clothes and collectibles prices could be a little hefty. “You could probably buy a nice dress for as little as $200 and probably up to $5,000 or $6,000. And a $5,000 or $6,000 dollar dress will probably be a designer dress by a Couture designer dress,” said Ornstein.

There are also plenty of vintage clothes that are both affordable and wearable. However vintage high heels should be worn at your own discretion.

“It’s just a little harder to find things like that that are in really good condition because I like to have clothing that’s very wearable. You know that people can actually use rather then collectible stuff,” said Pettit.

As for textiles, Ornstein said, “People buy textiles for inspiration and cotton prints and prints for chiffon are still very, very much desirable.” Besides paying about $20 to just shop around, vintage shoppers could also see vintage clothes by Ossie Clark, a star of London’s fashion scene during the 60’s and 70’s, which was on special exhibition courtesy of Mark & Cleo Butterfield of C20 Vintage Fashion.

Not everything in the past will be next year’s fashion trend or seen often in vintage sale shows. Shoulder pads from the 80’s were not visible.

“Gosh, I wish I knew I lived through it the first time. But people are tending to like the very ornate handbags. They did a lot of fun things with leather in the 80’s, some things that were a little bit over the top. I mean people aren’t necessarily going for the big shoulder pads that were in the 80’s,” said Pettit.

Your purse packs a punch.

“In an age when nobility has no true signature, an expensive designer bag is the most rapid social shorthand for status,” Anna Johnson, the author of Handbags: The Power of the Purse (Workman Publishing, 2001), writes by e-mail. “Between women, it’s a sign of success and social mobility. Fiercely so.”

Customers are lining up to spend $1,200 or more for such models as Chloe’s padlock-adorned “Paddington” and Fendi’s top-handled “Spy Bag.”

Stores have waiting lists for those designs, as styles such as the 50th-anniversary edition of Chanel’s famous 2.55 quilted leather bag with chain handle are flying out of Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue.

Why are status bags getting so much attention when, according to the consumer-research outfit NPD Group, most American women spend only $40 to $65 a bag?

Handbags are hot for a number of reasons. Trends flow down from the high end to the mass market, and companies serving both customers stand to make big profits on a product that women love to buy.

Handbag sales in the United States were projected to be $5.76 billion for 2004, an increase of 8 percent, according to Accessories Magazine, which conducts an annual audit.

“Everyone is getting into it because there’s so much money to be made,” says Valerie Steele, the director of the Museum at Fashion Institute of Technology in New York and author of Handbags: A Lexicon of Style (Rizzoli International Publications Inc., 1999).

The status-bag market even has spawned online businesses such as bagborroworsteal.com and frombagstoriches.com that rent handbags to women who lust for them but lack the cash or the desire to own them forever.

In addition, for the shopper, a handbag is a forgiving purchase, not requiring she be built like a supermodel. “You don’t have to be a size 2 or have a wonderful little waist, which helps you get over the despair of shopping,” Steele says.

And a designer bag can lend clout to a wardrobe at a price far below what a full outfit from the design-house label might cost.

“One step up from perfume, the handbag is also the most accessible item an ordinary working woman can afford from a very exclusive house,” Johnson says. “Status bags are a cheap thrill, comparatively speaking, for those who want business class but are living coach.”

“Handbags are collectible in a way that shoes are not,” the author adds. “They don’t pound the pavement. They also are wearable in a way that hats are not. All you need is a manicure, and you’re ready to rock.”

Women who buy status bags often speak of investing in the item, as opposed to clothing purchases that are likely to be in and out of style. “When you look at how often you carry a bag, it’s easier to justify (the price),” says Holly Kylberg of Denver, who is busy on the social and philanthropic scene and is known for her extensive designer wardrobe. “In many cases, you are wearing it every day.”

Purses also are the type of item that can be put away after a season and recycled a year or two later, says Evelyn Dallal, a New York fashion public relations executive.

“I’m constantly pulling out my Epi leather Vuitton bags. I’ve worn them for years,” says Dallal, who used to represent Vuitton and now has another high-end accessories client, LAI.

“I’m an accessories person. I dress simply, but I love color and exotic skins. I never used to buy colored bags, but I’ve learned it’s a way to dress up your outfit.”

This is a prevailing thought about status style: wearing a single designer or a bunch of designer duds head to toe looks dated, while toting a Gucci purse while wearing a casual outfit sends another message: “You spent a bundle,” Steele says. “Nobody wants to look like a fashion victim.”

But what bag does a woman choose? Which one is going to be the true “it” bag, a style with the staying power of Hermes’ Kelly, named for one of its most famous customers, Grace Kelly, or Chanel’s classic quilted bag? Or the more contemporary Fendi baguette or Dior saddlebag?

Designs from such companies as Chloe and Balenciaga are gaining ground with young shoppers.

Michelle Heacock-Webster, a handbag-and-accessories manager at Neiman Marcus, says she recently talked with a college-age woman who had her sights set on a status bag. “She said, “What I can really afford is Kate Spade, but I must have a Chloe bag. This is the only bag I’m getting.”

The store expanded its handbag department a year ago and added several lines, but Heacock-Webster says she didn’t notice “the explosion” in interest in bags until this past spring.

“I have had some Chloe and Fendi bags wait-listed since July. We basically take the orders and ring them when they come in. They never even hit the floor,” Heacock-Webster says.

She and others say that customer interest is fueled by celebrity sightings, advertisements and other marketing by the handbag companies.

Fendi’s success a few years back with the baguette bag, which was seen on everything from the HBO hit Sex and the City to the arms of a slew of Hollywood starlets, led other companies into the game, says Ellyn Chestnut, a fashion-accessories director at Elle magazine. “The market was flooded with people who wanted to do an ‘it’ bag. Designers would want to know what we thought of them and were pushing us to feature them.”

For a bag to attain that status, Chestnut says, “It has to have coolness and wearability.”

Exclusivity helps, too. From many of the high-end companies, bags only trickle into the stores, leading to limited supplies and resulting wait lists.

Also a factor is that the bag be seen on the right people, including editors and celebrities. “Prada for many seasons would give fashion editors their bag of the season,” Chestnut says.

The focus now has shifted to celebrities, who provide “instant gratification” to companies when their designs are seen in magazines, she says.

And it doesn’t matter if Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton got the style in an awards-show goodie bag, if they are photographed wearing it, “the look is celebrity-endorsed, and it inspires people to buy,” says Deborah Rudinsky, merchandise manager for accessories at The Doneger Group, a New York City buying office.

“Accessories play a much bigger role in a woman’s wardrobe than they ever have,” Rudinsky says. “It’s a sensible way of updating your own inventory, regardless of your income level.”

And when your budget won’t fully cooperate, you can still get into the game. Sandy McNamee, a busy mother of three, was having trouble deciding what purse to get for her birthday a few months back. “I knew I wanted a handbag, but they were so pricey. I love Marc Jacobs.”

McNamee’s husband found out about bagborroworsteal.com, a membership service for handbag lovers that rents styles for a set monthly fee, a sort of Netflix for the fashion lover. “He got to present me with a handbag and the membership. It’s really fun,” McNamee says.

While it’s hard to argue the money trail (who do you think sells this stuff?), as well the “effect” portion of the theory (terrorism isn’t good)- the “cause” seems to have been relegated to the arena of moral and political propaganda. Terrorists are evil-doers, thus so are pot smokers and bootleg DVD collectors. Patrons of the knock-off Prada handbag peddler in New York City? That’s right- evil-doers.

Maybe this suffices for the simplicity necessary nowadays to market a political and moral agenda. Unfortunately, real-world cause-and-effect isn’t so black and white. When we look at the issue under the microscope of socio-economic reality, the real causes involve players in our own capitalist economy: the companies that supply goods, and the consumers who want them.

The issue is of serious concern. Sure, it certainly may be difficult to take it seriously for most people, when the only interface to the issue is Reefer Madness-style public service announcements during the Super Bowl, somehow drawing a line from a teenager’s desire to experiment with marijuana to Islamic fundamentalists flying planes into buildings. However, with the rapid globalization of the economy, combined with the fact that terrorist attacks are now a threat within the borders of nearly every nation- the issue of the supply and demand of the black market should be a primary matter in the War on Terror.

- THE VALUE GAP -

Sometimes it helps to skip over the moral arguments and move right into the universe of Economics 101 (in that morality is often made up, and economics is real). Black markets often exist because of a gap between the value of a product and the demand for it. This gap is often caused by some artificial effect on the current value of the product, because unaltered supply and demand should create a value for a product that generally works for everyone that needs it. We all complain about the price of gas and groceries, but there is a reason that there isn’t a thriving black market for it.

There is, however, a black market for what our culture considers high-end luxury items. A select few people with relatively massive expendable income have valued, for example, certain purses or watches thousands of times higher than their normal, mass-market counterparts. I’m not about to condemn this on some “higher moral ground”- free market economics safely allows for value to be placed on items for purely intangible, vanity reasons. If you can easily afford a $1000 watch, go nuts.

The problem occurs when the mass culture- not just the ones who have nothing better to do than buy $1000 watches- ascribes a need for or entitlement to the same irrational types of products, disregarding the economic means of quenching this need. It works like this: A purse, for instance, is recognized as a need. The fulfillment of this need is valued at $1000 (a $20 purse will just not do!) The means to fulfill this need is, say, $20 (the person can reasonably afford a $20 purse). Thus, the perfect environment for a black market: $20 knock-offs of $1000 purses.

Now, will our desire for designer handbags bring about the end of Western Civilization? Most likely, no. At least not all that quickly. However, when you look at it conceptually, from above, one begins to see the connection between rampant consumerism and the destructive factions of our global culture. Gluttony and irrational consumerism- for this and many other reasons- certainly aren’t helping the security and progress of our civilization.

- THE ANTIQUATED VALUE OF ENTERTAINMENT -

When we take a look at other areas of the black market problem, the socio-economic causes play out slightly differently. That is to say, the corporations supplying the legal versions of these products aren’t necessarily free of fault, either.

The digital age has turned the entertainment industry on its head. The economics of the entertainment industry have always been very different than, say, manufacturing; the value of the end product- what is essentially intangible “content”- is mostly fueled by perception. For decades there was rarely- if ever- a price war in terms of the cost of a CD or VHS/DVD movie. Even though the tangible, base product (essentially a bunch of zeros and ones on plastic) was of little actual value, the ethereal “meaning” of the product (songs, words, and/or images) had a high relative value in the market. Of course, having a monopoly on the distribution of said product helped inflate that value.

As the Internet became widely adopted, an interesting change occurred with the perceived value of entertainment content. It sank to next to nothing. The masses were easily- albeit illegally- able to obtain the same product for free. And they did. This is in stark contrast to the economics of the $1000 designer purse, where people clamor to value the intangible characteristics of a product well beyond the cost of its parts and distribution. Simply put, the masses told the entertainment industry that they wanted to consume massive quantities of their product, but they wanted it dirt cheap.

The industry responded not by quickly changing the way they sell their product, but by the rather curious move of criminalizing and suing their own customers in bulk. One would think that a normal market response would be for one or two record companies- for instance- to respond to the realities of the market and maybe to give away the songs as a leader into making money off concerts, t-shirts, and the like.

The irony in all of this is that the aforementioned changes in the demand were a result of the expense of distributing the supply truthfully becoming dirt cheap- a situation most industries beg for. However, the entertainment industry seems to be sticking by an inflated value for its product. At the same time, criminal organizations certainly don’t mind selling bootleg CDs and DVDs at a price the market will bear. Yet again, an irrational concept of value creates a black market- this time on the supply side.

- THE REAL WAR ON TERROR -

The black market is unlike any other illicit and criminal environment in that it directly exposes- and exploits- irrationality in the counterpart legal environment it mimics- our economy. And the black market is no small affair- by some counts it is twenty to thirty percent of the entire global economy. That’s actually not such a big problem until we see where this money is going.

As we evolve into a global economy, this black market is stretching far beyond the simple desire of an individual to make a quick-and-easy buck. The bad guys are no longer a few derelicts on a street corner peddling fake watches from a trench coat. Rather, the bad guys are now extremist political organizations- terrorists- many bent on disrupting or destroying capitalism itself.

One may take this as an indictment on the general concept of capitalism. Certainly, as we’ve seen, the forces primarily at fault for the rise in the black market are the players in the game of capitalism: suppliers and consumers. However it is not quite that simple. The problem is not capitalism, but rather the inability of the said players to responsibly participate in capitalism.

The variables here that cause the irrational flaws in the market- which, in turn, feed criminal interests- are very much cultural, even psychological. We are a culture that increasingly devalues true logical thinking. It’s perfectly accepted for a consumer to value a purse at $1000. It’s perfectly understandable for an industry to try to cling on to a business model based on inflated perceived value.

Terrorism is not funded simply by “evil doers” doing evil things. It is funded by illogical thinking and irrational consumerism. That, in the end, may be the toughest war to fight.

[Surly Girl owner Alison] Muh retorts, “I am a small, new business trying to pay my astronomical rent. I cannot afford to lose a sale. Antonio was parked in front of my store and took up two parking spots all day … He was paying off parking enforcement with free food, which is why they let him park in a two-hour metered zone for over six hours a day. On one day alone, I counted more than 20 shoppers who could not walk through [Antonio’s] unruly line to get to my store. I begged my landlord to help me find a good solution for everyone. We finally approached Antonio directly and he yelled at us.”

Sony Pictures staffer Leigha Lindsay sent Surly Girl staff an e-mail with a subtle threat: “Have you had a turkey dog? A burrito? A tuna sandwich? I ask that you take this into strong consideration as bad press is not beneficial to your store.”

We must commend Muh, who could have easily replied to the angry industry luncher with a counter e-mail along the lines of, “Well, have you ever tried a Large Hamptons Hobo? A flower bangle? A Laguna Tote?!” Here’s hoping the two businesses find a workable solution, and that life on the bustling boulevard gets back to normal soon. After all, there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to pick up a couple kosher dogs with everything for you and your latest purchase, who probably hasn’t been fed in days.

Susan Fitch, the founder of Susan Fitch handbags, will be in studio to talk about her handbag company and why it is considered one of the “best” in Chicago. The segment will begin with Susan talking about how she got started in this business and her background. With a first-class flock of loyal fans, this meticulous designer has been catering to the au courant crowds across the country for years. Susan’s dedication to seeking out the finest materials, precise attention to detail and a hint of edginess, is her recipe for success.

The newest addition to Susan’s collection is her Million Dollar Baby Bag. After the birth of her baby, she realized it was time to create a baby bag worth carrying (with or without the baby in tow). Understanding that modern-day moms are looking for something fashionable and functional, Susan created a luxurious bag that is ready to tend to any trend-setting tot, while keeping up with mom’s style.

Recently seen on ABC’s “The View” and “The Today Show,” Susan Fitch bags are sold at Barneys New York, Kitson in LA, Holt Renfrew in Canada, and across the country at specialty boutiques. For more information about Susan Fitch, log onto susanfitch.com.