How To AVOID Buying A Low-Quality Bag

avoid being ripped off with a low quality designer bag because let's face it these pieces can be big financial investments these are the five secrets that I use to identify true high quality luxury bags because they aren't all made equally hey my name is Steph if you are new here now I am very much in pursuit of the highest quality luxury pieces on the market right now so much so that last year I actually made my own leather bag like I cut the leather I chose the leather and then I saddle stitched it together I edged it and all of that was in Aid to understand a little bit more about Leathers in general and the amount of skill and detail that goes into making one of these pieces so after owning hundreds of luxury bags over the last few years and spending thousands of hours immersed in the luxury market and what is available right now these are my five top tips the first secret is to know what your bag is actually made from now a lot of designer bags are made from leather so we need to have a basic understanding of what makes a superior leather and different types of leather so we know how they might behave when I was first starting my luxury journey I was very much guilty of not really having a thorough understanding of leather and how it's used it is instrumental to understanding whether you have a high quality piece in front of you or not now there are two things we need to factor in which we're going to go through in a little bit of detail the first one is that you get different cuts from the leather hide of the animal again not all of the same quality and the second one is that you get Leathers from different animals of course let's dive into the different cuts from the highs of leather then so the highest quality grade leather is top grain leather it is the most luxurious and expensive type of leather and it comes in two forms which are full grain and corrected grain now a full grain leather can absorb oils and moisture so it will patiner really beautifully and another great feature about this leather is that it can actually breathe now even though it absorbs moisture and oil full grain leather is incredibly durable now let's move on to corrected grain Leather by the way if you are enjoying this I'm definitely going to be delving deeper into this world of quality and Leathers in more detail so if you aren't subscribed already make sure you do so a corrector grain leather is still full grain leather however it will go through varying techniques to create a consistent look and feel to the leather this usually involves sanding the top layer of the leather to remove any imperfections and then the piece might go through something like a heat embossing with a pattern for example I'm thinking Chanel caviar leather as one of those and the embossing creates a surface pattern now when a hide is cut to the desired thickness you will get a cut of the bottom of the hide this is called the split and it's often what we refer to as suede leather it absorbs moisture really easily and it's definitely not as hard wearing as full grain leather so it's worth bearing that in mind it is the cheapest part of the Hide and you know when you're at a market store or a cheaper store in general they might have like wallets and bags and they have tags on which says made from genuine leather I would run a mile from anything that says genuine leather because they're probably using the super cheapest part the scraps of the leather hide and then they're probably coating it in some kind of vinyl or plastic so you often kind of have like a plasticky feel and smell to it anything with genuine leather on the rule of thumb is run a mile away from now of course you can get suede backs I do have the YSL Lulu this is in a cinnamon colored Suede and it does behave very differently to my top grain leather bags in the sense that this absorbs moisture super easily I have to be really careful with it if I'm out in the rain for example they definitely are higher maintenance and they aren't as durable so worth bearing in mind now before we move on to the different types of animal hides and how they behave one of my top tips something that I don't compromise on anymore if I'm buying a super high-end bag I want that bag to be leather lined there are downsides to having a leather lining in terms of it can make the bag heavier than if it was lined with a canvas or a fabric for example but I have found some of the higher quality pieces that I've got are leather lined and it just kind of goes to show that the designer the fashion house have thought about the entire experience so you've got a beautiful exterior leather and then you open it up and often you have like suede or lamb skin leather lining and I just find the piece then to me feels so much more high quality now the second part to this sec secret if you will is also having an understanding of the different types of animal Leathers what their characteristics are and how they're going to behave so I have this image here got cow Buffalo goat and camel leather we can see that the cow leather so CF leather overall has good strength durability softness the pricing of it quite good we also have Leathers such as ostrich and lamb skin leather the secret is kind of understanding this and when you are looking at buying a bag making sure it is in a leather that is going to work well for you do value dur ility over how soft it might feel for example now of course not all designer bags are made from leather so let's take a look here we have a Louis Vuitton coated canvas bag I have lots of these in my collection actually and truth be told especially at the start of my journey I didn't really look into what my bag was actually made from okay so coated canvas not a leather it is a canvas a fabric which is then coated with like a vinyl or a plastic again the brands don't have to disclose this to you so I don't actually know what the coating is made from these are super hardwearing they look great you can print some fabulous prints on but there are other brands and other options where for this amount of money you can get a top grain leather bag for cheaper or around the same amount of money and again it just depends what kind of qualities you want from the bag now this leads me on nicely to something that I wish I knew earlier on in my luxury buying career and that is that you can get exceptional quality for much lower price points so we are currently seeing the rise of contemporary Brown Brands which focus on quality over branding so you're not paying for the logo but you are getting a super high quality piece and one of those Brands is itellas AUST now itellas AUST are the sponsors of this part of today's video I've worked with them before and I can genuinely vouch for the quality of these pieces they use full top grain leather so here is my mini Marley bag from tellio Aus the last time that I worked with the brand it literally has my stuff in like right now because I've been using it and the quality is so good the leather still smells absolutely amazing but I have a new piece here so let's quickly unbox it together open this Up From Paris With Love okay so these are designed in Paris and they are made in Italy the brand was founded by two French brothers and again the main material that itellas ogus uses is the most magnificent top grain leather sourced from the best Italian tanneries going to get a little bit closer so we can experience this together because my gosh I absolutely adore this wow if this isn't the most Chic looking bag you have ever seen honestly just how beautiful is this we have the logo on the back the side of the bag this is the Gabriel Gold Edition bag and this is in a sensational Black Box calf leather how stunning okay so the bottom of the bag here really nice structure and I'm going to quickly show you so we have two compartments honestly the smell so the two compartments this is micro suede leather Lin so again if you're looking for a quality piece leather lining for me even like a suede leather lining it just feels so much more premium high quality we have two pockets one on the front we have one on the back and we have a fantastic zipper compartment here so you can keep everything safe one of the best things about the hardware on these bags is this magnetic closure like you don't have to kind of line the bag up I have a few bags where you have to kind of make sure the poppers are aligned together before it will close but with this magnetic closure it is literally just as easy as closing it like that and it feels very secure now we do have an adjustable strap here can wear this as a shoulder bag move my chair out the way so I can show you like this obviously you can shorten this or you can wear it as a cross body bag my gosh this is just it's going to go with everything as well they do have different colors but the Black Box C was just unresistable now the tanneries atello ogus source their leather hides from respect the strictest European regulations this is a guarantee of quality traceability and respect for the environment and they also only select hides coming from the food industry they make the choice to do this in terms of recycling and sustainability and to contribute to responsible fashion pieces now I do have something really special to share with you because itellas ogus have kindly given us another 10% off discount code honestly when the last code expired the amount of Instagram messages I got is out of this world so the code is live again I'm not sure for how long so make the most of it I will flush it on the screen down below it is Steph T this is going to get you 10% off sitewide now secret number two is knowing the hardware of your bag what is it made from and how is it going to wear and I just wanted to bring to your attention that aelia's ogus Hardware one of the best features that I love about this bag is a brass covered in three microns of real gold and it really does bring just like a genuine Touch of luxury to these pieces so this is the Gold Edition line feature the real gold plated Hardware thank you so much to itellas ogus for sponsoring this part of today's video it's an absolute honor to collaborate with such an incredible brands that I know so many of you love and I am one huge advocate okay so back to secret number two in terms of the hardware of the bag understanding what metal is the hardware made from is it plated with precious metal such as real gold now let's take a quick look at some of the huge fashion houses so we have a MZ so they do plate with real Precious Metals they Hardware so they use real gold Palladium Etc but then you've got fashion houses such as Chanel that used to plate with 24 karat gold but now they don't plate with any real gold um a lot of hardware on designer bags is actually like a brass now now there are characteristics of things like brass such as they are less likely to scratch gold can be a softer metal so again just taking the time to kind of look at the piece look at how it has been plated if it's been plated with real gold if it hasn't looking at reviews of bags as well can be a real Telltale sign as to whether that Hardware is going to scratch easily and if that bothers you or not now when we talk about Hardware you also want to check things like zippers if the bag features a zipper does it run smoothly is it easy to use and also charms on bags so I'm thinking here about the lady Dior bag you have this Dior charm which you cannot remove on the front of the bag now I've never really seen or heard too many complaints about the Dior charm actually harming the bag in any way but it is noisy it does a lot of clinging and clanging which is something that I do see people complain about so again just make sure you do your research on the hardware of the bag secret number three is understanding how the bag has actually been constructed for example has it been machine stitched or hand stitched is one better than the other the simple answer is yes I just also want to quickly touch on terminology here when I talk about machine stitching versus hand stitching I have unfortunately seen big Brands say things like this bag has been handmade and what they mean by that is that the someone's hands have actually taken a piece of leather and took it through a sewing machine so what I'm talking specifically about here is machine stitched which can be done by hand versus hand stitching literally the stitches have been done with someone's physical hands now the vast vast majority of bags on the luxury Market are machine stitched the machine stitching might be done by hand but it is very rare now that you will find a piece that is hand stitched but hand stitching is superior to machine stitching and it obviously takes a lot more time and it takes very skilled Artisans to be able to do this so what is the difference exactly the lock stitch looks very straight when you do it on a bag it's very consistent so some people will like that because it just just look more uniform a hand Stitch is often slanted often these stitches maybe aren't the perfect length because they are done by hand so it will have some imperfections but a machine cannot fully replicate a saddle Stitch which is the strongest Stitch you can do it's called a saddle Stitch because it is the Stitch used for creating saddles on horses now saddle Stitch again cannot really be achieved by a sewing machine and this is what it looks like different to a lock stitch so to do saddle Stitch which is what I did with my bag it requires a figure of eight technique one of the other advantages of hand stitching something is that you can control the tension of the thread so I can tell you after two days pretty much of solid saddle stitching my hands were definitely red raw because they weren't used to it but you can really pull the the Stitch and because you can control the tension it does mean that the bag can generally carry more weight without breaking and it's just high quality in general and a super important Point demonstrated in this image is if you break a lock stitch quite a few of the stitches can come undone eventually the entire line can come undone versus a saddle Stitch basically that one stitch breaks and because it again is a figure of eight it doesn't mean the rest of the stitching is going to come undone or definitely not as fast as a lock stitch would I was super surprised by this I literally did a saddle Stitch myself and then pulled it apart and I literally couldn't get the other stitches to come out so a hand stitched bag that features the saddle Stitch which is usually the case they are designed to last longer and withstand more weight so they are superior so I know what your next question is because it was my question as well which brands which bags do feature actual hand stitching then it is quite rare to see these days AZ is an obvious one now not all their bags are hand stitched it's only their quota bag so the Burkin and the Kelly that I believe are still handmade and it looks like the Herz Burkin for example is a combination of hand Stitch and machine Stitch so the outlin in yellow are the pieces that have been machine stitched and the outline in blue are the pieces that look like they've been hand stitched there is another kind of lowkey brand that is on my radar right now Joseph Deo and upon doing some research it looks like a similar situation to what's happening at a MZ you do have some parts of certain bags that are hand stitched with the saddle Stitch or the box stitch and some parts which are machine stitched again this is something that you're now armed with a piece of information something that I'm definitely going to consider when I'm investing a lot in a bag I want to know how it's constructed Ed down to the detail of the stitching secret number four is understanding the history of the brand you are buying from now this was a super top tip from a subscriber a subscriber said to me if you're looking for true quality find the houses that started out as leather goods companies not the brands necessarily that have done like the ready to wear they're more a fashion house and then they've added leather goods on like designer bags and shoes as a Bolton and it's pretty safe to say that the companies that started out as leather goods compan have had way more focus on things like the tanneries they're sourcing their Leathers from the quality of the Leathers the hides finding the correct crafts people that have a super high skill level to produce the pieces that they want now some of the oldest companies that started out with leather goods we have Delo we have Joseph Deo we have omz but they don't always have to be super high-end and super expensive because again Brands like itellas AUST are super focused on the quality of their leather pieces they aren't doing ready to wear they aren't fashion house they are just about sourcing the highest quality and are laser focused on their leather pieces and secret number five is after care so the first part of this is understanding the wear and tear of the item so a lot of styles of designer bags may have been on the market for many many years so the first thing that I want you to do is go to a pre-o website like vestier Collective eBay for example search that style of bag and look at ones that have been around for as long as possible and see how those items have worn does the hardware look super scratched are they wearing a lot in the corners of the bag what like what has happened to that bag in that time or does it still look Immaculate and try and do as much research here as you can this is something I like to do because if a bag often gets wear and tear in a certain area like the corners for example I will absolutely make sure that I take a bag hook out with me so I'm not putting the bag down all the time if the lining of the bag often look really grimy and dirty I will make sure I have liners for that piece and it just helps me to decide whether I want to invest in that and potentially make me aware of some quality issues that I want to know before purchasing the second part is the Aftercare of the brand so big Brands like AMZ they have the AMZ Spa Chanel have the Chanel at Mo program which is basically you get a guarantee on your bag for 5 years so if anything goes wrong with it they will then repair it for you so the higher quality pieces I find generally the brands have also thought about Aftercare these are the five things that I wish I knew at the start of my journey but I'm super grateful that I can now share them with you make sure you don't go anywhere because coming up next the 10 most wanted bags of this year the survey results are in and the Most Wanted bag is even a surprise to me because it didn't make our list last year enjoy

Channel: Handbagholic

Views: 10,942

Keywords: Designer Handbags, Designer Bags, how to find high quality bags, which designer bags are the best quality, high quality affordable bags, high quality designer bags, high quality leather bags, handbagholic, ateliers auguste, how to identify a high quality bag, different leathers, machine vs hand sewn, best designer bags, best luxury bags

Id: nT1VeeQCcvs

Length: 17min 46sec (1066 seconds)

Published: Mon May 13 2024