Louis Vuitton’s Spring 2012 runway show was a joy to behold for a variety of reasons: the enormous carousel set piece bearing dozens of the world’s best models, girlish clothes in the most powdery and feminine of pastels, luxury in every detail. The entire collection felt fresh, light and joyful. Personally, though, I was distracted by one thing and one thing only, which was trying to guess how much the littany of crocodile pieces, from bags to jackets, would cost once they hit retail. Not only is crocodile astronomically expensive all on its own, but Vuitton tends to charge a premium for all of its products, above and beyond most another brands.

For the handbag star of the collection, the Louis Vuitton Crocodile Old Speedy Flap, we now have an answer, but go ahead and try to guess before you peek.

$33,000.

My personal guess was around $35,000 and I thought that even that kind of figure might be a little low, particularly when you consider that so many designers seem to be in some sort of unofficial race to see who can produce the most ridiculously expensive bag of them all. (Hermes probably has everyone already beat on that anyway.) Not that $33,000 is something that is even within the realm of reason to pay for a handbag – it’s not! But, you know, it’s closer than The Row.

Louis Vuitton surely has clients who will pony up for this bag in one of its three colors – mint, jaune (pale yellow) or nuit (navy blue with a bit of softness) – or who knows, maybe someone will get it in all three. Primarily, though, pieces like this one serve a public relations function; not only do they get people talking, but they represent the designer as a purveyor of the sort of rarified goods that only a tiny sliver of the global population can ever hope to possess. If you have an extra thirty grand or so laying around the house, inquire about this bag via LouisVuitton.com.

The Louis Vuitton Crocodile Old Speedy Flap will cost you a pretty penny is a post from: Cheap Online Shopping

Hold on to your horses, folks. Or at least hold on to your Hermes Steeple Canvas Horse Totes – prices for the most expensive handbags in the world are about to get even higher.

We’re hearing from multiple people, including Mizhattan and Jim Shi’s Twitter account, that prices brand-wide are about to rise 9% at Hermes. There’s some conflicting information over when exactly that will happen – some say the end of January, some say January 24th specifically, some say early February – but whenever it happens, it’s soon. If you’ve been waffling on whether or not you should make a purchase, it’s decision time.

Hermes cites the need for the increase as the ever-rising cost of raw materials, specifically silk and crocodile. While it may be factually true that those things are more expensive than they were a year ago, it would be just as factually correct for Hermes to say, “Why are we raising prices? Well, duh, because we can.” The Hermes customer is not a woman who can be accurately called “price-sensitive” in the first place, and even though everyone grumbles about increases, it never seems to stop Hermes bags from flying off of shelves. Get to shopping, ladies – it’ll be a lot more expensive in a couple of weeks.

Eek! An Hermes price increase is coming at the end of January! is a post from: Cheap Online Shopping

Being a full-time accessories blogger means that, of all people, I’m usually pretty “up” on the trends. Not because I’m extra super cool (even though I am, trust), but merely because it’s a requirement of my continued employment, and like all of us, I’d very much like to continue to be employed. With that in mind, even I couldn’t have predicted that luxury leather coozies (FINE. They’re cup holders. But “coozie” is a much better word, and not all that wrong.) would become a thing that we all now have available to us.

I first covered the Hermes Coozie a couple of weeks ago, and now that the Internet at large has begun to discover its existence, people are pulling random leather cup holders out of all kinds of weird corners of the accessories business. As a result, we have the Jimmy Choo Rika Cup Holder in embossed croc to present to you today. Watch out, though – it’s only $25 less than the Hermes version. This is why they hate us, ladies. But wait, what? There’s now a CROCODILE version of the Hermes cup holder?

Image via Styleite.com

Yes, this is a thing. The crocodile version costs $250 to the regular leather’s $190, but based on the prices for other Hermes small leather goods in exotic leathers, that seems lower than I would have expected. Like the leather version, the crocodile cup holder is part of the Petite h collection, which is Hermes’ effort to use scraps of leather, silk and other materials that are used in its regular products that might have otherwise been thrown away.

Most luxury houses are incredibly wasteful, particularly those like Hermes who have the most meticulous of standards for what might constitue a flaw in a piece of material, rendering it useless for its normal products. The effort to use the waste toward something playful that consumers might enjoy is a good one, and Hermes has said that these products will only be manufactured when extra material is available. It’s like extremely high-end recycling, which is likely why the prices (relative to other Hermes price points) are low. For a brand with rabid collectors, these kinds of small items make a certain amount of sense; they cut down on waste and satisfy a group of customers that is willing to shell out money for anything with an H on it. Brilliant.

Jimmy Choo, on the other hand, would simply like to sell you another nearly useless leather doodad, and for nearly the same price as Hermes. If you somehow find yourself needing to choose between the two (and I’m not really sure how someone gets to a point in life where that’s a decision that needs making), I think that the correct choice is obvious. Buy the Jimmy Choo version for $165 via JimmyChoo.com, or contact your local Hermes store for more information on how to obtain Petite h products, if any are left. (One never knows these things with Hermes.)

Jimmy Choo makes coozies now too, but you should stick to Hermes is a post from: Cheap Online Shopping