Love this. Want it.

Designer handbag Fendi leather handbag

It’s 2007, I believe, but it’s so beautiful I hardly care which to which season it belongs. I mean, COME ON.

Approximate dimensions are 14.5”W x 10”H x 2”D and the strap has about a 10” clearance.

It’s MADE IN ITALY with a deep main compartment fully lined in black FENDI satin with a small internal side pocket. It has secured zipper closure with new FENDI zipper logo and FENDI engraved gold rings. Here are a couple of places to purchase this black calf leather Fendi bag with authenticity dust bag and original packaging included. Here and here.

Check out this Fashionista story about diamond prints, Prada (Miu Miu), and popularity.

I love finding out that I’m ahead of the fashion curve. Even though my shoe collection is pitiful, I make less than $25,000 a year, live in grossly homogenized Utard, my fashion sense isn’t totally warped. I still managed to sniff out some diamond print from amongst thousands of options in an open air market in Florence, Italy. SWEET.

Sorry I just had to congratulate myself there for a moment…

If only I lived in NYC, I would gladly take a stroll through this space-age looking Chanel Mobile Art exhibit. Commissioned on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Chanel bag in 2005, now it’s traveled to Central Park in 52 shippable containers and includes installations from 15 different artists about handbags. Yay!

Chanel is reportedly paying the city $400,00 to park their handbag museum on the lawn. In the story the city parks official said proceeds will go to horticultural improvements from 85th Street to the Harlem Meer…

This Fall ‘08 Rebecca Minkoff Nikki bag is officially on my list of things to covet.

Rebecca Minkoff Nikki Bag

FunkyLaLa has this style for pre-order ($600) in cloud grey, dark brown, and noir, while Rebecca Minkoff’s site has it in persimmon (pictured), yellow, and wine. It’s all pre-order at this point, but it looks so beautiful and functional, and like you want to repeatedly stroke it just to soak up the stylish look of the leather, everyone’s going to want one.

The hardware appears subtle, but solid, with what looks like a magnetic button top-closure.

Rebecca Minkoff is an NYC-based designer who got her start in the fashion industry as a cutter/draper for her high school’s costume department. She is still described as “up-and-coming”, but the only thing up-and-coming I see in her bags are their affordable prices (and by affordable I mean, not $2,000). She has a huge celebrity following and women really seem to identify with her styles.

In no certain order, I am proud to present this list of fashion don’ts (they may be in ‘fashion’ but that doesn’t mean they look good!!):

1. Maxi dresses (Leave it to couture designers to decide it’s time to look like hippies this season. Expensive, designer hippies. WHAT?)

2. Strappy wooden wedges (IMO wedges only looked good when Charlize Theoron’s Aeon Flux wore them in the movie of the same name. And if you have cankles and wear wedges, then woe be it unto you because that is just a recipe for disaster. And short people (take notes) wedges and chunky heels do you no favors – you just appear artificially elevated and like your feet are too big for your legs. True.)

3. Gladiator sandles (just, please no.)

4. The entire Heidiwood collection (I mean, COME ON.)

5. Chloe booties – hated it. And no one looks good in them! Even delicately-ankled celebrities with insured gams.

6. High-waisted formal shorts – the whole concept of formal shorts is lost on me. Want to show some leg? Wear a skirt. That’s all I’m sayin’. And while I can appreciate the vintage beauty of a waistband that reaches the floating rib, the overall look of the contemporary high waist is just awkward.

Wow. I feel loads better just having gotten that out of the way. I mean, I know designers will always push the envelopes of tradition and aesthetics and people will always wear what they want, no matter how ridiculous it might look. I just thought since I’m preaching the fashion, I should lay down some aesthetic ground rules.

I might just scrounge up some thumbnails later to accompany my list (which is sure to grow).

took place in Florence, Italy last month. I was there on tour with a baroque choir (I play the cello). We had a few hours of free time one day before our concert in Florence – I had read about and seen travel shows about the huge open-air leather goods market there. And let’s just say as I drifted along the street leading away from the Ponte Vecchio, I smelled the leather before I ever saw the market! I was seduced…

Black and white Daniela Moda hobo bag

Basically, amidst the literally hundreds of handbag and other leather good vendors in this market, I was immediately seduced by this little beauty. I LOVE black and white two-tone anything, the shape is adorable, and it was also in my price range – 32 Euros, about $50 American.

The construction and design of this bag is immaculate and well-done. Each of those two-tone panels are stitched separately onto the face of the bag. The hardware is not cheap-looking or feeling and is a shiny slate-grey. There are a couple of interior pockets, but it’s not really designed to be a day-to-day bag – I would say this is an evening or special occasion bag.

People: Italian leather, especially from Florence, is very fine. They raise an excellent cow in that part of the country. Apologies to the vegetarians and vegans of the world… Florentine designers are also very fine: think Prada, Gucci, and Versace, to name a few BIG names.

My research on Daniela Moda reveals that she is a relatively new designer, based in Tuscany. And I have to say, I love my Moda bag and it now has the place of honor in my admittedly small (for now) collection. Searching Moda online revealed a couple of different options, one was strictly wholesale, and the other was in English, but prices are listed in British Pounds.

I never saw my little two-tone hobo on those sites though, so score one for me and my original tastes!

The thing is, I have two major problems: a handbag addiction and no desire to quit.

I don’t even own any Versace (YET, and I refuse to own knock-offs…), but I know what I like and I know what quality design and materials look and feel like!

I created this site to write about handbags and fashion and designers and styles and materials so my friends don’t have to listen to my fantastic ramblings. Instead, all us hopeless handbag hounds can ban together in Handbags Anonymous and guide each other to new heights of style, color, and quality hardware!

So tune in here for discussion on designer handbag lines, how to know what you like, what’s hawt and in the spotlight, who’s carrying what on their arms, and whatever other handbag-related whims I might conjure up.