Scouring the post-holiday sales had us more disgusted than ever with the whole Designer Bag category.   Enough already with the pleats and the tassels and the buckles and the chains!  If we never see another stud or grommet again, we’ll die happy. 
    Is it just us, or did most of the high-end handbags this season look like a lot of overdone, over-sized, overpriced ugliness?  Honestly, we saw very few bags, marked down or full-price, we wouldn’t feel like a fashion-victimized, celebrity-aping idiot carrying around.  (In fact, it got to the point where a few of us started referring to some of the more obnoxious monstrosities as Giant “D-Bags”, because we figured that was their target market, if you know what we mean.)

It’s not that we object to the size of this season’s pieces per se; in fact, we’ve always preferred roomier bags.   We doubt anyone schleps more stuff around than we do—even a trip to the doctor’s office requires at least 2 magazines, a laptop, and a thermal mug full of our daily Venti Cappuccino injection.  [Other days we might be hauling anything from paint and fabric swatches to an expandable file filled with (one of) the dog’s vet records, not to mention essentials like sunglasses, a cellphone, wallet, day planner, tape measure, calculator, Ipod, Advil, Purell, tissues, a Tide-to-go Stick, a makeup bag, and at least one working pen.] 

   
 But in our opinion, too many designers took oversized to the extreme, not just with the trash-bag proportions, but also with the bling-bling  detail that made an already overwhelming accessory just too much for the average-sized woman to pull off.      The result is that even celebrities tend to get upstaged by their bags, (which can actually be an advantage when they’d otherwise look like homeless people) because nothing screams LOOKATME! LOOKATME! LOOKATME like a big honking tote. 

   
   
   
   
   
   
Apparently Hilary Duff thinks her giant Dolce & Gabbana sachel makes up for going out in public in dirty hair and sweatpants…



We can only hope that the the shift toward slimmer, sleeker shapes and cleaner surfaces that we predicted was coming soon will show up in at least some of the spring bag collections that are in the hopper right now.  So far, the new arrivals that have started to trickle in aren’t overly promising—Marc Jacobs and Chloe are churning out the same old poochy, pouchy, quilted, gold-hardware-festooned biker bags that have long been their bread and butter (or, more accurately, their caviar and fois gras, so, okay, we guess we can’t really blame them for sticking with it), but there are some glimmers of promise here and there.   For instance, Yves Saint Laurent and (believe it or not) Kooba are showing some more pared-down looks than in seasons past. 

Look, Ma, no tassels!  YSL’s Capri Medium Bucket For Spring

Could the tide be finally starting to turn?  Or are we doomed to another year of handbag hell?  The suspense is almost too much to bear!