How do this happen?" Nina Collins inquired as she settled down to some lunch of miso soup and salad in downtown Manhattan final week. "When do we arrive at this place where we commit $1,000 over a bag?" The question was rhetorical. Not prolonged ago Ms. Collins herself arrived at that place, succumbing, she confided a bit sheepishly, to some yen for any handbag styled like a saddle bag from cheap Louis Vuitton handbags store. In buying the handbag Ms. Collins, a literary agent, joined an actually widening circle of status-driven, selectively acquisitive consumers whose purchasing routines have buoyed the luxury marketplace this 12 months - steeper gas prices, inflation plus a weakened dollar be damned.

In their pursuit from the season's most coveted bags, many are giving typical sense the slip, parting with, say, $975 for any very best vendor such as the Marc Jacobs Sofia bag, which which final fall commanded $895, or $1,445 for any leather-based Prada "bowler" bag that, a number of seasons back, price $940 or $990 for comparable models. Shoppers' infatuation with handbags has lent that category substantial clout, towards point, retailers and market analysts say, that bags store have supplanted shoes, jeans and also jewelry as consumers' option signifier of affluence, social standing and hipness. never thoughts that some models, in the battered and fringed variations now popular, search as though they belonged to some tramp. It looks that every single 12 months what we're seeing in the women's fashion luxury marketplace there have been a migration from a single category towards next," said Marshal Cohen, the chief full analyst with the NPD Group, a marketplace study organization in Port Washington, N.Y. "A handful of many years ago it was shoes. final 12 months it was jeans. This could be the 12 months from the handbag."

Discount cheap luxury handbags sales, which had been $5.34 billion in 2003, had been projected to climb 8 percent for 2004, the newest figure readily available from components Magazine, a make trades monthly. women who purchased bags final 12 months spent on typical only $40 to $65, based on NPD. Ultra-luxury custom bags - from $650 to about $15,000, which account for an determined five percent from the marketplace - are important because the designs invariably filter down, setting the trends with the mass market.

One purpose with the go up of those bags is the fact that the relaxation of fashion has moved toward a far more dressed-down look, to make sure that even jeans may be appropriate for any dinner party. A four-figure bag imparts the corrective message: I am not only a graduate student. "You can go out with blue jeans and cowboy boots, and that high-priced bag tends to make it all O.K.," said Cece Cord, a social figure in ny who sells her crocodile handbags at Bergdorf Goodman. "A bag is sort of like a lightweight house. It represents you."