Smaggle is in handbag ecstasy!

Posted by in accessories, local, smaggle

I’ve been dreaming of owning a designer handbag since a vintage loving friend showed me a hideous brown Burberry number that she inherited from her grandmother. It didn’t matter that the handbag was ugly. What mattered was that it was Burberry.

I’ve been scouring the web for the perfect designer piece but spending upwards of a cool grand on an over-logo-ed LV makes me feel a little sick. I’ve also developed a serious aversion to handbags with too much hardware, a trait that ‘it’ bags seem boast in the extreme.

I was wandering around in Morrison the other day and I spotted the perfect bag. Zombie-like I trudged towards it and spent an obscene few moments just stroking it and smelling it. I frantically searched for the designers name on the swing tag and nearly fell over realising it was a Mercurialist bag, designed by a gorgeous and talented Melbourne based lass that I just graduated from jewellery school with. I was in desperate need of a black bag and the Morrison store only stocked green so I searched online and found Supermarket, a smaller more highly curated version of Etsy that has a Mercurialist store.

Without delay I ordered the Hard Clive and payed with PayPal. It arrived two days later by express post and it hasn’t left my side. Nor has it gone even one day with being gushed over and/or felt up.

At $389, it’s a pricey bag but I can say with out hesitation that it’s worth every cent. I paid $250 for a well-known brand’s popular leather bag less than a year ago and it’s totally falling apart. I would much rather pump my money into a beautifully designed, robust, locally made piece than a mass produced catastrophe with a shelf life of approximately ten months.

I also love that the money went into a PayPal account with the designer’s name. Not the company name or an account name but the name of an actual person. That actual person also packaged the bag beautifully and included a hand written note. As I said, it was worth every cent for both product and service.

As for my designer bag that I was craving, I’ve decided I would rather have someone paw over my beautiful Mercurialist than have mild but forced admiration for a revolting Burberry.

And seriously… how gorgeous is it?