Coach Purses

Last week, we rounded up the best accessory gifts for all the recent college grads in your life. In the comments, one of you asked us to make some suggestions for high school grads, and because we like to consider ourselves a full-service blogging operation here, we felt compelled to oblige. Almost any huge life change – graduation, moving to a new city, having a baby – impacts the way a woman interacts with the things that she carries every day, and I like to think that the best way to ready someone for a change like that is to get her the sartorial equipment she needs in order to settle in to her new life.

Thus, we present you with our picks for the best high school grad gifts. Leaving home for the first time is nerve-racking enough, but there are some things you can do to make sure your grad is prepared to take on college and hit the ground running. Not to mention, if you get her a nice overnight bag, maybe she’ll come home more often. (That’s a pretty good theory, I think. Write that one down.) Best of all, all of our picks are under $600.

Hear me out on the Marc Jacobs Quilted Key Pouch, because I can’t recommend it heartily enough. Entrance to almost all modern college dorms is done either by showing your school ID to a desk clerk or swiping it through a card reader, not to mention that school IDs are usually what gain you entrance to dining halls and school sporting events. At my school (UGA, Go Dawgs), you couldn’t even buy textbooks off campus without presenting that holiest of holy cards.

That means it’s important to have your ID handy at all times, lest you essentially lock yourself out of your own life without even losing your keys; attaching one of these pouches to your key ring keeps it with you. I’ve used one of these Marc Jacobs cardholders since my freshman year in college, and eight years later (yeesh), I still have the exact same one on my key ring. I had a cardholder from a different brand prior to getting this one, but it only lasted a few months because the zipper came loose and would slide open in my purse; this one locks in place, which is a much safer setup to hold ID cards. Buy through Barneys for $175.

Not long ago, I said that my feelings toward Thursday Friday’s line of bag-on-bag printed totes had “softened.” At that point, Balenciaga was the latest designer to have a photo of their work plastered on a canvas tote bag and sold for up to $90 apiece, and like Hermes and Chanel before it, Balenciaga is a huge brand with a huge corporate structure behind it to protect its work product. They can stand up for themselves, and although the Thursday Friday bags are certainly not my personal cup of tea, the combination of the chosen subject matter and the totes’ ubiquity had made me a little less opinionated about the whole thing.

Well. Guess what. This time, Thursday Friday has chosen to go after Proenza Schouler, a small New York brand that’s still in its relative infancy and that has yet to so much as open a brick-and-mortar store for itself. Compared to the Chanels of the world, Proenza Schouler is utterly tiny and a labor of love by the brand’s founders, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. The success of the PS1 and the brand’s other accessories allow it to do some of the most beautiful and innovative textile work in modern fashion; clothes like that don’t often turn a profit because of the enormous expense associated with producing such technically complicated work in small quantities, so for Proenza Schouler and brands like it, handbags are a crucial part of the business model. But hey, who cares about all that? Let’s take someone else’s hard work, slap it on a tote bag and make some cash!

Picking on the big guys is one thing. Taking something iconic and asininely expensive and re-appropriating it to poke fun at the fashion establishment is a longstanding tradition in the industry, and not something I generally have a problem with it. In fact, I love seeing a few well-placed stones lobbed at the old guard; it’s good for our health, as a collective. The problem, though, is that Proenza Schouler isn’t the fashion establishment or the old guard; it’s a spunky upstart that makes a bag that’s been popular for a few years. With that in mind, Thursday Friday splashing Proenza’s work on a bag to fatten their own bank accounts seems crass and opportunistic. Picking on the little guy isn’t clever, and it’s certainly not something I’d ever advise anyone to spend money on.

If you’d like to buy a real Proenza Schouler bag, you can do so via the brand’s website. If you’d like to buy one of the Thursday Friday bags, I suggest you start Googling, because I’m not going to be providing any links to their “work.” If you can even call it that.

(If there were a way for me to drop the mic and stomp off stage on the Internet, this is where I’d do it.)

Generally I love anything that Balenciaga does with its much-loved Balenciaga Motorcycle Bags. I love them in regular leather, patent, prints, raffia…you get the idea, I’m a fan, and so is the rest of the PurseBlog team. In fact, the only trepidation I can remember expressing over Balenciaga’s bags in the past concerned the brand’s first foray into perforated leather, and I don’t think I like the Balenciaga Polka Dot Bags any more.

This design features perhaps the biggest perforations I’ve ever seen on a handbag, and I can’t help but wonder how that will play into the bag’s longterm wear. Cutting that many holes of that size into a piece of leather significantly changes how the material distributes stress and weight, which will likely lead to a shorter lifespan for the bag. Of course, if you’re buying a look this bold, you probably don’t want to wear it forever; a single season might do just fine. And now that I think of it, if you’re looking for a bag in which to carry your extremely tiny dog, these might be nice, breathable options. Check out more pictures of the bags after the jump and then let us know what you think in the comments.

Balenciaga City Polka Dots, $1645 via Balenciaga

On the eve of the much-anticipated Facebook IPO, everyone is buzzing about the pioneering social network and its role in our daily lives. Many people stand to become extremely wealthy once shares hit the market, especially Mark Zuckerberg, who is a mere 28 years old. I’m part of the Facebook generation, and I login daily to connect and see what my friends are doing. Make sure you are connecting with us, we have some great giveaways coming up!

Like PurseBlog on Facebook now!

If you’re a regular BagThatStyle reader (or a Brit), you’re probably long familiar with these two ladies, but if you’ll allow us to indulge ourselves a bit, I’d appreciate it. I’ve become slightly fascinated with Petra Ecclestone Stunt, the 23-year-old handbag designer (really, she is) and new owner of the famous Spelling Mansion, and her 27-year-old sister Tamara Ecclestone, whose resumé seems to include going on lots of fabulous vacations with her boyfriend and wearing every dress Herve Leger has every made. The most important thing that you need to know about these two women, though, is that their handbag collections are absolutely sick.

The Ecclestones are relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but these heiresses have quite the pedigree, not to mention the bank accounts to back it up in a way that Paris Hilton never could. Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, is CEO of Formula One racing and has a net worth estimated at $4.2 billion. Their mother, Bernie’s ex-wife Slavica, is a former model known mostly for her work with Armani (and for being a full foot taller than Bernie) and whose 2009 divorce settlement reportedly made her a billionaire as well. These girls have money to burn, and it looks like they’ve chosen to burn a significant amount of it on handbags, particularly those from Hermes. Petra even loves bags so much that she’s designing her own line of ulta-luxe clutches, which you can check out, along with some of the most lust-worthy bags in both their closets, after the jump.

In general, Petra likes to keep her Hermes bags neutral…

When a handbag becomes a hit, you can always bet that you’ll see its details morphed into new shapes without much delay. Not only does it make sense to capitalize on the original design’s popularity, but remaking a tote as a shoulder bag or a satchel as a crossbody is a great way to capture the interest of additional customers who like the original but don’t see it as relevant to their structural preferences. Thus, we present the Yves Saint Laurent ChYc Shoulder Bag, born out of the success of the original Cabas ChYc.

At first I wasn’t all that jazzed about this bag, but when I started to imagine the shoulder version in some of the lovely colors that the tote comes in – turquoise, magenta, red raffia – everything became clear. At 35″ long, the bag’s strap is juuuust long enough to allow the bag to be worn across the body, and in a punchy color, this roomy, relaxed design would make a great everyday bag for someone who likes to stay hands-free. At this point, I’d beg and plead for more colors besides black and cranberry, but I feel pretty certain that they’re already on their way. Buy through Bergdorf Goodman for $1495.

Lana Del Rey’s path to stardom may have been carefully planned, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it happened. Truth be told, I love her music. I have it on in the background while I work often and I totally dig it, a fact which I’m not even going to deny. Mulberry realized Lana Del Rey is a new “it” girl, and now she has an eponymous bag to prove it.

We covered this bag when it was first seen on Lana and announced by Mulberry. The bag dropped today on Net-A-Porter and I believe you should take another look at the Mulberry Del Rey bag. Mulberry has designed quite a few hits, including its much-lauded Bayswater and Alexa. If you’ll remember, the Mulberry Alexa was named after Brit star Alexa Chung and the bag itself became highly sought-after.

The design is simple like most Mulberry designs. Honestly, there isn’t much to report on. The tote shape of the bag has an East/West finish and there are double top handles. The leather on all Mulberry bags is extremely thick, which tends to make the bags both durable and heavy. This is why I always love optional shoulder straps, especially from bags known to be on the heavy side.

I was and still am a major fan of the Alexa, and I’m not sure the Del Rey will be able to fill its metaphorical It-Bag shoes. Do you think it will? Either way, if you want this bag, you better hurry because it will certainly sell out quickly. Buy via Net-A-Porter for $1,250.

The best situation is when one of your favorite stores tells you that the more you spend with them the more money they will give you back. Neiman Marcus is running an event right now where you can earn a Neiman Marcus gift card up to $500 just by shopping. Have a handbag you have been eying? If you buy it today or tomorrow, you will earn a gift card back.

Shop the Neiman Marcus Event now!

Dare I say that last night’s episode of Real Housewives of Orange County was actually…pretty decent? Of course, it had all the hallmarks of an entertaining episode: cosmetic surgery, on-site spray tanning, an over-the-top kiddie birthday party and actual familial strife being laid bare for the cameras to round out the hour. It seems as though the OC ladies might be learning something from their neighbors to the north in Beverly Hills.

As Real Housewives has started to decline a bit over the past year or two, it’s always seemed to me that the show would be more interesting with fewer episodes that contained more actual plot. If I had to re-edit this season, last night’s episode would be one that I’d keep almost entirely intact, which is about as good of an endorsement as I can give at this point. Now, on to the recap.

We started at Alexis’ house, where she was planning a Puppy Princess (or Princess Puppy, as she calls it, because she’s a creative person and can’t be hemmed in by others’ expectations) party for her twin girls’ fourth birthday. The essential element of the party preparations that we saw was the in-home spray-tanning which, thankfully, wasn’t applied to her pre-schoolers. I watch Toddlers & Tiaras, so when the tan tent was being erected in the kitchen, I started to get a little nervous. For once, perhaps the only time, this show didn’t sink quite as low as I thought it might. Alexis still smeared all kinds of makeup on the twins’ faces in advance of the party, of course, but I’ll take my victories where I can get them.

Elsewhere, Slade had invited Heather to a jewelry store to help him pick out a ring. And, I mean, there are so many questions: Why Heather, who barely knows Gretchen? Why did Heather know specific things about what Gretchen would want in an engagement ring? Why are this show’s seams showing so much lately? Am I the only one who hates the canary diamond/yellow gold combination? Anyway, as we all know, Slade is broke, so after looking at a few rings that cost zillions of dollars, he asked how much it would be to have a fake diamond made in the image of one of those rings. If the jeweler had had his way, the Earth would have opened up and swallowed Slade right there, and I don’t think any of us would have been particularly sad. Not even Gretchen.

In the umpteenth plastic surgery scene of the season thus far, we then joined Tamra in Dr. Heather’s Husband’s office, where she intended to have her wedding tattoo physically cut off her body if she could stop fear-pooping long enough to let it happen. She said that she was doing it because it bothered Eddie so much and he would get her a ring if she had it removed once and for all, and all I could think while Tamra was talking was that I would have thought she had already learned her lesson about altering her body in permanent ways at the behest of a romantic partner. Wasn’t that how she got the tattoo in the first place, not to mention the gigunda breast implants that she had yanked out earlier this season? I can understand wanting to get the remnants of the tattoo removed, but Tamra, please don’t do it because you think it gives you some sort of guaranteed outcome with a dude. You’ve been making so much progress!

Tamra is sticking to her guns about not moving in with Eddie and the kids, all together, until she has a ring, though, so that’s something. She’s also realistic about the kind of impact that moving in with her kids might have on her relationship, which is more forethought and realism than I would have previously assumed Tamra was capable of. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is New, Improved Tamra, but I’m still cautiously optimistic. Now that I’ve said that, she’ll probably participate in the removal of a dead body from Vicki’s house next week, just to prove me wrong.

Speaking of Vicki’s and her house, she and her brother Billy were there, still dithering about Brianna’s marriage. Mostly they were complaining about how the whole ceremony and party that Brianna had promised to have for her friends and family wouldn’t mean anything, but what meaning, exactly, had Brianna deprived them of? They were still saying vows in from of their friends and their chosen religious figure, so what’s the real difference? Not to mention that marriage has never seemed to be so utterly sacrosanct to twice-divorced Vicki in the first place. I simply don’t see the harm in letting the kid do the legal ceremony by herself if that’s what she feels like she needs to do, particularly if she’s still promising to participate in the Vickifest that the wedding will almost surely turn out to be.

Meanwhile, at Heather’s house, she and Gretchen were discussing the architectural decisions that they had made when they had the house built, including the ultimate, most important luxury – his-and-hers bathrooms off the master suite. In my mind, if you’re building a custom home and you don’t include two bathrooms off the master, you are not very smart. Heather, despite her attempts to play up some unpleasant parts of her personality for the show’s sake, is quite intelligent. Her bathroom choices tell me so.

After the bathroom talk, the two of them got down to business – Gretchen and Slade’s relationship. Gretchen still doesn’t want to get married, which seemed like the first time that Heather had heard that. Remember, Heather is an actress by trade, so of course it seemed like that. Bravo expects us to believe Heather and Gretchen have discussed the particulars of engagement rings in great detail but not Gretchen’s actual thoughts about getting married in the near future, but I’m not actually willing to suspend that much disbelief. Gretchen actually got a little emotional about the fact that she may never be able to marry Slade, which is the most I think we’ve ever seen her care about the whole issue. She does know that she wants to be knocked up by 36, though. That’s for sure.

At Alexis’ house, the party for which everyone had gotten all tanned and makeup’d had commenced. Alexis made a big speech about how she had nearly died trying to deliver her twins, which was perhaps a little intense for a bunch of four-year-olds, and she followed that up by telling all the children that the puppies they were all playing with needed good homes. Great! Because explaining the realities of birth and death while trying to pry a scared puppy out of the hands of a crying child who has already named it is exactly what a parent wants to do at a birthday party on a sunny afternoon.

Back with Heather, she had just found out that she hadn’t gotten the role that she had auditioned for a few weeks prior, and refreshingly, her attitude about the whole thing was positive. Unfortunately, it did get her talking about the dumb restaurant idea again, which is something that I really had hoped not to hear about for the rest of the season. Heather is more interesting and relatable when she’s trying to carefully unravel Alexis’ brainless lies, and I’m worried that the restaurant may cut into her interrogation time.

We then visited Tamra and Eddie, who were out to dinner in perhaps the worst location ever (right next to an active train track!) to have a very serious conversation about the future of their relationship. As we mentioned before, Tamra’s afraid that moving in with her and her kids would overwhelm Eddie and ultimately drive him away, which is probably a reasonable fear to have. Eddie’s younger, never-before-married and without any kids, and he’s taking on an older woman who has tons of baggage, which is a situation that would be difficult for any couple. He seems pretty game for the whole thing, though, and so far, I don’t have any huge problems with him.

Eddie’s never tried to parade any of his personal business ventures in front of the camera or insert himself into any of the show’s plots that don’t concern him (hello, Slade), and although he’s had a couple not-so-great arguments with Tamra, he doesn’t seem malevolent in the same way that Simon always did. Importantly, the Internet hasn’t dug up any truly awful things about him in the two years that he and Tamra have been dating, so I’m guessing that he actually is a fairly normal person. So, you know, maybe those two crazy kids will make it. (Tamra also “revealed” her tattoo removal in a way that wasn’t at all believable, so let’s just pretend it never happened, shall we?)

And then, of course, was the main event. I actually didn’t take any notes during Vicki’s conversation with Brianna – it was THAT compelling. Normally I can watch this show with my head in my computer the entire time, but listening to Brianna clearly (more or less) and succinctly verbalize all the concerns that both she and everyone else have about Brooks required my full attention. Vicki and Brianna appear to have been in some therapy together at some point, because as soon as Vicki tried to change the subject by trying to pick apart Brianna’s husband (who seems to have no skeletons other than being previously divorced), Brianna called her out on it and shut her down.

Amazingly, Brianna was able to not only mention all of things the Internet had already found out (Brooks is a deadbeat dad, he has four kids by three women, he’s had at least one DUI, he’s a hanger-on that drives Vicki’s car around Orange County while she works, etc.), but also something that it theoretically hadn’t: Vicki and Brooks have been “friends” for a long time. She plainly said that she had seen evidence that Vicki had been emotionally unfaithful to Donn before they decided to get divorced, and although Vicki weakly denied it, she seemed like she was mostly aghast at being caught and confronted.

No matter whether Vicki tried to belittle Brianna by calling her a child even though she is grown or tried to change the subject to talk about Ryan’s sins (none of which she could name specifically), Brianna stayed the course and didn’t yell even when Vicki raised her voice. She did do the thing she did to Brooks where she cocked her head to the side and stared off into space while Vicki shrieked, which seems like it’s probably a coping mechanism that she developed to deal with Vicki’s loud-mouthed insanity at an early age. Ultimately, though, Vicki seemed frantic and indignant that someone was actually saying what everyone was obviously thinking, and I’m genuinely interested to see how the situation continues to unfold. I can’t remember the last time I was genuinely interested in anything the Real Housewives did, but I think it was circa Beverly Hills.