Handbagista

Isabella Fiore handbags have won the recent distinction of becoming the one of the hottest red-carpet accessories among Hollywood’s fashion elite, gracing the arms of the likes of Kate Hudson, Halle Berry, and Madonna. Isabella Fiore bags are recognizable by their exploration of unique fabrics, delicious adornments, and vibrant color.

Founded by designer Jennifer Tash, the Isabella Fiore line was born in a tiny Los Angeles studio won almost overnight popularity among celebrities when they hit the market. Isabella Fiore continued to garner recognition in the fashion design industry. Tash and her design partner, Trang Huynh, won the CDFA Perry Ellis Award for Excellence in 2002; the duo also nabbed a Designer of the Year Award from the Accessories Council Excellence Award for Designer.

The Isabella Fiore handbag collection is revered for its devotion to detail, clever designs, and luxurious fabrics. An intricate kaleidoscopic of designs, handcrafted stitching, and the unique fabrics meet to dazzle the eye. Tash and Huynh import materials from all over the globe and embellish the fabrics with hand stitching, custom-designed artwork, and beading. A trademark of the line is the designers’ frequent selection of materials that are more often seen in bedspreads, rugs, or furniture.

For example, Isabella Fiore’s “Magic Carpet Frame Bag” employs vibrant colors, lush chenille, and leather trim. The line’s Sheer Delight Hobo bags are smaller and more understated. Accented with a tassled pull, braided strap, and brass studs, Isabella Fiore’s hobo bags are sure to please anyone in love with the ubiquitous boho chic look.

Those seeking an edgier look might turn to Isabella Fiore’s Whipflash, a larger-style hobo with big brasstone handles, rows of blanket stitching, and stud and buckle accents. One of the line’s most sought after designs is the Freedom bag. This scoop-style, smaller hobo bag features a gorgeous blue back panel and a front panel decorated in tattoo-style art. A row of vivid red roses splays across the bottom, and presiding in the center is a rising sun partly obscured by a banner that proclaims “Freedom.”

Depending on the style and materials, Isabella Fiore bags retail for anywhere from $250 to several hundred dollars.

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written by Julie

The designers at Balenciaga have been outdoing themselves ever since the namesake, Cristobal Balenciaga, began his brilliant career in Spain nearly one hundred years ago. Once again, with the Balenciaga Classique clutch bag, they have crafted one of the most sought after fashion symbols in recent memory. The Balenciaga Classique clutch bag is a beautiful piece of leather with sublime lines and exquisite character. But you don’t gave to ask me. Ask the starlets and celebrities and wannabe pop stars who hunt down this Balenciaga neo-classic.

There’s just something about a Balenciaga, an effect it has upon its wearer. Perhaps it stands to reason that though the original master himself, Cristobal Balenciaga, has not designed a piece since his death in the 1970s, that his fashion philosophy still pervades all pieces that his design house produces nowadays. This philosophy centered on the woman, with all her perfections, highlights, and faults. Balenciaga did not seek to lament that his buyers were not perfect. He understood that about his women, sought to help them disguise their imperfections, while drawing all attention to their finest features.

Or perhaps it’s just that Balenciaga bags such as the Balenciaga Classique clutch bag are so attractive, so alluring, that anyone who holds one will seem so, too. The shape of the Classique is unconventional and revolutionary, a slouchy bag that you can only hope slouches more with age. Armed with brass hardware and white leather, the bag gives off an edge that is quickly forgiven as soon as you touch it. Then you experience the suppleness and the warmth of the leather.

You can also expect such beauty in other Balenciaga creations, such as their Tweggy bag or the various motorcycle bags. They are all the rave at the moment, and thus are not ashamed of their rather heavy price tag. But with the attention they draw, and the gasps of astonishment that they evoke, these bags deserve those price tags.

If you even find one without the price that it’s worth, you ought to beware of that offer, especially if you find it on the Web. The Internet is notorious for replicas, spin offs, and fakes, and Balenciaga bags are no different. It would not be worth the anger and embarrassment of finding out your new Balenciaga Classique clutch bag was a fake, just to save a few dollars.

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written by Gail

You’ve started to see them more and more on the streets.

Just the other day in your office, one of the executives possessed one.

How could these be?

Are these men losing their wits?

They all are carrying handbags!

Hold your horses, John Wayne.

Before you move to Wyoming and become a recluse macho mountain man, you need to understand something. There’s nothing wrong with handbags for men, especially if the look as good as a Balenciaga bag for men. In fact, a Balenciaga bag for men can only help to make you look more manly and more sophisticated.

That’s the reason you tend to see successful-looking men toting a handbag.

They have come to understand that no other bag will meet their urgent needs during busy business days or even hectic weekend afternoons. Sure, they have their briefcase. Couldn’t they carry that instead?

A briefcase may be too bulky for quick commutes and fast-paced lunch meetings, especially if there’s no need to carry around all those files and documents inside.

How about the laptop bag?

Again, these bags tend to be too large and heavy, of course, if they’re packing a computer.

Now you’re beginning to see the reasoning behind men’s handbags. They are a happy medium between bulkier business bags and informal gym bags, backpacks, messenger bags, or fanny packs.

None of those last bags would suit an executive on the move in his jacket or tie, or an advertising mogul in his suede jacket and trousers. No, only something as stylish and hip as a handbag for men will do.

That’s where a Balenciaga bag for men comes in. Just like their line of handbags for women, Balenciaga men’s bags are as sophisticated as bags can get. You can only find better aged leather on the baseball mitt in your garage.

The Balenciaga black suede leather Sak model, for instance, is an Italian-made bag beyond reproach. Created out of an Aniline suede, this handbag has enough style to even suit a woman.

This Balenciaga bag for men is also extremely spacious and able to carry all of your important and private items without losing its exquisite outside shape. And you wouldn’t want that. It has black leather trimming the whole bag. Silver hardware adds an edge, just in case your ego needs a little help still.

And if you’re worried about the Aniline suede cord dangling sissy-like from the outside flap, don’t worry. It is designed to able to tucked and hidden away.

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written by Karen

You can tell a Carlos Falchi handbag from any other by its outrageous patterns and eye-popping colors.

Carlos Falchi definitely does not shoot for the typical mild-mannered women when he designs his fashion accessories. Instead he aims for those with a love for what would be considered as the cutting edge, such is the freshness and appeal of the creative combinations and exotic looks which go to make Carlos Falchi handbags.

Perhaps part of the Carlos Falchi edge comes from his Brazilian background, hot Latin blood married to an eye for detail and innovation?(Carlos originally came from Minas Gerais, Brazil.)

But much of what has attracted critics, consumers, and divas to his bags also has a lot to do with the utmost in quality and luxury that come with everyone of his bags. The acclaim and adoration of movie stars, magazine moguls, and millionaires comes with the innovative but caretaking way in which Carlos Falchi crafts the finest leathers, skins, and other materials.

For three decades, Carlos Falchi bags have been turning heads.

However, his career did not take off until he moved his show to the fashion capital of the West, New York. There, he started out designing costumes for movies.

He found success in the business, especially after the owner of a New York boutique was enthralled by one of his designs. It was a belt, and the boutique owner promptly ordered several more.

It didn’t take long before Carlos Falchi dove into designing not only belts and costumes, but bags and accessories for the stars and performers to wear when they were off stage or the silver screen.

With a focus on working with skins, leathers, and beautifully and stunningly juxtaposed colors and patterns, Carlos Falchi has won international acclaim since his start in New York.

He won a COTY award for his work in accessory designer. He even has had some designs forever enshrined in the permanent collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

But everyday handbag users, and women everywhere, can best thank Carlos Falchi for ending the reign of black. Black and grays have long been the chic color of the big city, matching the drab and dirty streets and sidewalks perhaps?

But Falchi turned those fashion blahs on their heads, and he can often be heard saying that color is the new black.

Plainness, fitting in, the urban camouflage - they have been forever left to the bankers and the lawyers.

Let women wear bright oranges, vivid yellows, joyous greens, at least when they have a Carlos Falchi handbag on hand.

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written by Karen

Balenciaga has come a long way from its first store in Paris in the 1930s. That’s where founder and fashion genius Cristobal Balenciaga fled with his head full of ideas.

He was escaping the horrors and the depression of the Spanish Civil War.

Thankfully for the world, he made it to France unscathed. The designs and notions of fashion that would flow from Balenciaga over the course of the next decades revolutionized how clothes and accessories were designed and worn by women.

Since the death of Balenciaga in the 1970s, the couture house that bears his name may not have thrived as it once had.

It wouldn’t be until 1997 that a revival took place thanks to the owners at the time, Groupe Jacques Bogart. They set out to return the brand to its former luster.

But unlike many other design houses, which would have chased down the first big name designer available and assailed him or her with legions of models and barrels of cash, Groupe Jacques Bogart went inhouse for the first big hire.

They made Balenciaga assistant designer Nicolas Ghesquière the head of the brand. The owners eased him into the position, allotting him months and then years to get the brand back on track.

It wouldn’t take long, though, before Gucci came a knocking.

It was 2000, and the famous GG logo wanted to buy Balenciaga. But more importantly, they wanted Nicolas too. His designs were already lighting up the runways and returning Balenciaga to prominence. So in the summer of 2000, Gucci acquired Balenciaga. The famous name Balenciaga was to stay, as was Nicolas.

This says bagfuls about Nicolas. Someone who had proven himself as worthy as he could have had his own fashion line. Instead, the designer appreciates the weight of Balenciaga, and seeks to fulfill his responsibility to it and to fashion.

The newness to Balenciaga fashion, with its early retro look touching down in the 1980s, and the heat coming off of Nicolas’ designs, regrew the worldwide Balenciaga reputation.

Their biggest success perhaps has been in the United States, where over 35 percent of their sales occur. What also sells, however, is fashion philosophies first touched on decades ago by Cristobal Balenciaga. Clothes and accessories are made for the women that wear them.

So after all, it only makes good fashion sense, and good business sense, that these accoutrements make these women happy, and exceedingly attractive.

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written by Karen