That Piece of Metal

Up to now, my favourite and most trust-worthy going-out handbag is a small Vuitton Vernis pouch. While I'm not big on monograms, I do think that the monogram on Vernis isn't as obvious or popular as the typical tan-coloured monograms. But what I really like about the Vernis bag is that it's made of patent leather, meaning that it's not 'the end of the bag' if someone spilt a drink on it. Plus the shininess of patent leather just somehow seems to suit going-out at night. But after using it for a few years, it's beginning to turn yellow and just recently at the back of Teen Vogue, the Vuitton ad was advertising this new Vernis bag:

On first glance, I thought it looked like a pretty and practical going-out bag that could last at least four seasons. But right in the centre of the bag, there's gold piece of metal that says 'Louis Vuitton'. In my mind, that's a con.

Unfortunately, having this big piece of metal on bags seems like a thing Marc Jacobs has been favouring in the recent seasons, whether it's at Vuitton...

or Marc Jacobs. Honestly, when I first saw those Marc Jacobs bags in real life, I remember thinking, 'That's ugly. Why would MJ add that brand-named-metal on such nice, contemporary bags?' And is it really necessary? It's usually pretty obvious when a bag is by Marc Jacobs (to me anyways.)

MJ seemed to have started these metal tags a few seasons back with Vuitton's canvas bags. I remember really not liking the tags back then. The thing is, it's understandably harder now for designers to differentiate their bags in the market from high street ones, especially when high street stores manage to produce the bags so quickly and some stores (eg. Zara) actually manage to make the bags to not look cheap. But is this really what designers are offering us now?

This season, Marc by Marc Jacobs has shrunk their metal tag smaller into this 'standard supply' tag, which is kind of an improvement from last season's metal plates (literally). (If you've visited a Marc boutique last season, you would have probably noticed some of the bags had HUGE Marc metal plates on them.)

Gucci has stitched on italic 'Gucci' on some of its bags in recent seasons too. But for some odd reason, it seemed more artistic and prettier than the Louis Vuitton metal tags -and I'm not even a fan of Gucci bags. (The picture here has a huge 'Gucci' name on it. The Gucci bags I'm referring to have smaller ones stitched on.)

Anyways, back to the first Vuitton bag on the top of this post, what does everyone think about it? I can't decide whether the gold metal tag is horrible enough to make me stop considering it!

Image credits: www.louisvuitton.com, www.guicci.com, www.shopbop.com, www.marcjacobs.com, www.saksfifthavenue.com