Everywhere you looked this year, there she was: The Row’s ultra-exclusive, ultra-expensive, ultra-stealth wealth Margaux bag, somehow always sold out despite its $5,600 price tag. The slouchy, oversize, masculine suede top-handle bag is the “It” bag for an anti–“It” bag era, carried by everyone from Jennifer Lawrence and Lisa from Blackpink to that annoyingly smug influencer who always seems to come up on your TikTok feed. But wait, did she say she actually got hers from T.J.Maxx?
If you’ve been lured by the handbag trend, you’ve probably noticed that despite suede’s luxury reputation, the soft leather bags can vary wildly in price — from less than $30 to upward of $5,000. And online, they all look almost indistinguishably soft and shiny, which adds to the constant, nagging feeling that now that everything seems more expensive than it was a few years ago, you might be on the verge of overpaying. It’s no wonder, then, that when T.J.Maxx released a near-identical version of the Marguax this fall for only $130, shoppers rushed to their local stores in the hopes of finding one.
Suede is a seductive material, not in small part because it whispers, “I’m expensive.” But exactly how much do you have to pay to get a quality bag? To try to make sense of the market, I examined six similar suede bags, priced from $27 to just over $4,000, with the help of experts to try to understand which one was worth the price. To find them, I searched online for “Margaux dupe,” and “suede tote bag” and scoured Reddit boards for recommendations at different price points, especially on the lower end.
What even is suede? I asked Volkan Yilmaz, better known as Tanner Leatherstein, a leather-goods-maker who cuts up and reviews luxury leather bags on YouTube. In one of his most popular videos, he found a small YSL Camera bag to be made with “decent” leather and “not too complex” in construction. “This bag probably cost about $160 to make, yet it’s retailed at $690,” he says. “It’s usually about the experience, the box it comes in, all the embellishment that comes with the brand — that’s what you’re paying for. If you don’t care about any of that stuff, it’s a little too much.”
Yilmaz reiterates in his videos that even though leather has a reputation for being really expensive, even on the high end, the material isn’t expensive enough to account for the sky-high prices of luxury bags. As with most everything in fashion, sometimes you’re paying extra for a brand’s name. (In an ideal world, you might be paying extra for a clever design that involves more than just a well-placed logo.) The same can be said for suede bags, which are made from the inner-facing sides of an animal’s hide. While suede can be made from deer, lambs, and even pigs, shoes and handbags are usually made from cow suede, which can be more durable and less expensive than other types of suede, like calf suede or goat suede. High-quality suede has a “writing effect,” meaning “you can just write your finger on it, and you will be able to see the hairs going up and down,” Yilmaz says. And it shines like velvet. Mediocre suedes will look dull and feel dry and rough. All suede is also more susceptible to damage than grain leather, because it is porous. “It’s hard to wear, it’s hard to keep clean,” he says. “It will get dust; it will get rainwater. It’s easy to ruin suede, a lot easier than ruining other leather articles.”
And the best quality suede is still less expensive than the highest quality grain leather, Yilmaz says, explaining that when evaluating bags, he looks not just at its materials but also the construction. Suede has its own considerations, too. It’s harder to manufacture, because it can so easily be damaged in the production process. A bag of light-pink suede, for example, is a “nightmare to make because you will get it dirty while making it.” That’s one advantage of faux suede, which is commonly used in cheaper bags, and is much more durable than real suede because it’s usually made from a kind of polyester that is resistant to weather and dirt.
With all this in mind, I took my selection of suede bags to Long Island City, where the Leather Spa, a repair- and restoration-specialist firm, has its headquarters and repair facility. There, I found a team of staffers cleaning, stretching, mending, and re-soling high-end leather bags and shoes. I met with co-owner David Mesquita, who had pulled out half a dozen suede samples so I could see how nicer goat suede feels than pig. (Much nicer.) Then I pulled out my cheapest suede bags, which were, in fact, faux suede. The first came from a brand called Deermisu via Amazon, cost $30, and arrived with a nasty chemical smell. Right off the bat, David was disturbed by the edges of the bag, which are usually sealed and waxed over, but here the stuck-together layers were visible. “That’s horrible,” he said. Still, he admitted the bag doesn’t scream “cheap” from an arm’s length distance. “This looks like suede.”
Mesquita was more turned off by the next bag, slightly more expensive at $60, which came from an online brand called Soera. (After I bought the bag for this story, I discovered that Soera appeared to have used a product photo of The Row’s bag to advertise its dupe.) “I can’t believe this is $60,” he said. The first thing that jarred him was the faux suede, which had the texture and feel of a microfiber cloth. “Usually, this material would be used on linings,” he said. The edges were waxed but uneven, and the stitching was messy. The hardware looked just as cheap as the hardware on the Amazon bag. The first $30 Amazon one suddenly looked more appealing.
My third faux-suede style, one of the smallest I bought for this experiment, impressed Mesquita the most. I also bought it on Amazon, from the trendy handbag line JW Pei, for $103. The fabric was dense and fuzzy, listed as a spandex on an interior tag. Mesquita appreciated both the construction and the fabric, which didn’t feel all that different from the goat and lamb suede samples in his office. “I just think, for the bang for the buck, you know, I think it’s a good value. It’s durable … It looks stylish. It looks like suede.” He said the stitching was neat and tidy, and the polyester would have the added bonus of being very easy to clean.
Next up was a floppy real suede tote from J.Crew, the bag in my experiment that least resembled The Row’s Margaux. (I chose it because I wanted something in the $200 to $300 range, a dead zone for handbags these days, and this one cost $228.) Mesquita didn’t have strong thoughts: The bag has a very simple construction and is floppy because it has no reinforcement inside like bonded leather or cardboard, which is usually used to give handbags their shape. It was made with real suede, which is a plus, but means it will probably stretch out over time without more reinforcements. “Nothing negative,” he said. “I’d recommend getting it on sale versus full price.” Coincidentally, it’s currently marked down to $159.50.
My next bag, a $600 style from Reformation, is also made with cow’s suede, which is a plus for durability. Mesquita found it to be well-made but overall simpler than the price tag would suggest. For example, the lining was made of canvas, not leather. The hidden magnetic snap looks expensive but wouldn’t be strong enough to hold the bag closed when full.
And finally, we came to my most expensive bag of the day, a $4,150 style from Métier, a London-based label, with a number of inside flaps and pockets. Mesquita was surprised there was no overt logo, given the price. But there were indicators of quality everywhere — in the hardware, the suede lining, the pleats in the body of the bag. There were also little details that showed an extra effort in construction, like a reinforced ring attachment for a shoulder strap. The suede felt like cow, so it was more durable but still high quality. But $4,000 worth? Mesquita said that’s up to the shopper.
Later I showed the Métier bag over Zoom to Yilmaz, who lives in Spain. He has stronger thoughts. “There is a big brand premium on the bag we’re looking at here,” he said. “It’s crazy, I didn’t know they were selling $5,000, $4,000 suede bags. This is going to be very tough to keep clean unless you don’t mind it getting dirty and starting to develop a patina, which eventually it will because of the oils and everything from your hands.” Yilmaz thought the price of the $600 Reformation bag was more reasonable, though he noticed some flaws in the edge paint. And in his view, the J.Crew bag was priced the best for what it delivered.
To me, the Reformation bag most captured the slouchy, roomy appeal of the Margaux without looking like a carbon copy. And, after hearing from Mesquita, it would be the one I would most likely buy if I needed a suede bag and didn’t have a $5,000 gift card to Bergdorf Goodman lying around. At this point in my life, having donated one too many cheap bags that quickly ended up looking beat up, I’d rather buy fewer bags in the under-$1,000 range and keep them for longer. The JW Pei bag, while a bit small, also was much nicer in person than I expected it to be, and I already have and love one of its simple shoulder bags.
If you want a quality leather bag and you don’t care about wearing a fancy luxury logo, Yilmaz gave me some general shopping tips. “Mid-size, good leather, cross body — that’s going to cost the manufacturer somewhere between $100 and $175 to make” after materials and labor. Most brands sell their products at least three or four times that price to generate enough money to actually run a sustainable business. Yilmaz advises looking for a leather bag of that size in the $400 to $600 range, especially if it’s sold by an online brand that doesn’t have to cover the costs of lots of stores or big marketing campaigns. (Some of his favorites include Strathberry and Stow London.) “Anything cheaper than that, you know, it’s going to be going down in quality in different aspects of the bag,” he says. I was reminded of a TikTok review of that popular T.J.Maxx bag that pointed to its uneven edges and the disappointing lack of structure inside the base to keep the bottom from sagging. As it turns out, some bags simply look better on TikTok.
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