At the same time, there’s been a lack of novelty in the designer bag space in recent seasons. Instead, people are digging into the archives. “Old bags are back,” Amanda Mull wrote in The Atlantic earlier this year. “A significant—and growing—number of fashion-conscious people appear to be mining the depths of their closets or scouring secondhand marketplaces for designs released in the past decade or so.”
Designers appear eager to feed the demand with reissued styles, too. See: the Gucci horsebit chain shoulder bag and the Prada Re-Nylon 2000 Mini-Bag, both of which retail for well over $1,000. Baggu’s nylon shoulder bag, on the other hand, features a similar crescent shape to the Prada bag—for a mere $44.
Although not everyone believes there’s been a complete lack of new high-end It styles as of late, the minimalist part of the equation still rings true.
“I have been seeing The Row’s Margaux tote everywhere lately,” says Jess Graves, writer of The Love List, a shopping newsletter on Substack. The Row’s leather Banana Bag, which retails for $2,350, is also a favorite of TikTokers looking to emulate the Olsens’ signature aesthetic. Squint, and the Uniqlo bag is a solid dupe for roughly one-twentieth the price.
Graves concedes that cost and It factor aren’t mutually exclusive. “I don’t think a bag has to live at a specific price point to be ‘It,’” she says. “I think ubiquity is a key factor, as is the buy-in from people we might see as aspirational, whether it’s a celebrity or just a cool girl on the street.”
Graves points to the COS quilted bags—which start at $49 for a “micro” size—as achieving that status. “The COS bag has such mass appeal because it’s distinct enough to clock as a ‘thing’ but not a blatant knockoff of something else,” she says.
