The London Handbag Shopping Centre

Not long ago, I said that my feelings toward Thursday Friday’s line of bag-on-bag printed totes had “softened.” At that point, Balenciaga was the latest designer to have a photo of their work plastered on a canvas tote bag and sold for up to $90 apiece, and like Hermes and Chanel before it, Balenciaga is a huge brand with a huge corporate structure behind it to protect its work product. They can stand up for themselves, and although the Thursday Friday bags are certainly not my personal cup of tea, the combination of the chosen subject matter and the totes’ ubiquity had made me a little less opinionated about the whole thing.

Well. Guess what. This time, Thursday Friday has chosen to go after Proenza Schouler, a small New York brand that’s still in its relative infancy and that has yet to so much as open a brick-and-mortar store for itself. Compared to the Chanels of the world, Proenza Schouler is utterly tiny and a labor of love by the brand’s founders, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez. The success of the PS1 and the brand’s other accessories allow it to do some of the most beautiful and innovative textile work in modern fashion; clothes like that don’t often turn a profit because of the enormous expense associated with producing such technically complicated work in small quantities, so for Proenza Schouler and brands like it, handbags are a crucial part of the business model. But hey, who cares about all that? Let’s take someone else’s hard work, slap it on a tote bag and make some cash!

Picking on the big guys is one thing. Taking something iconic and asininely expensive and re-appropriating it to poke fun at the fashion establishment is a longstanding tradition in the industry, and not something I generally have a problem with it. In fact, I love seeing a few well-placed stones lobbed at the old guard; it’s good for our health, as a collective. The problem, though, is that Proenza Schouler isn’t the fashion establishment or the old guard; it’s a spunky upstart that makes a bag that’s been popular for a few years. With that in mind, Thursday Friday splashing Proenza’s work on a bag to fatten their own bank accounts seems crass and opportunistic. Picking on the little guy isn’t clever, and it’s certainly not something I’d ever advise anyone to spend money on.

If you’d like to buy a real Proenza Schouler bag, you can do so via the brand’s website. If you’d like to buy one of the Thursday Friday bags, I suggest you start Googling, because I’m not going to be providing any links to their “work.” If you can even call it that.

(If there were a way for me to drop the mic and stomp off stage on the Internet, this is where I’d do it.)

Generally I love anything that Balenciaga does with its much-loved Balenciaga Motorcycle Bags. I love them in regular leather, patent, prints, raffia…you get the idea, I’m a fan, and so is the rest of the PurseBlog team. In fact, the only trepidation I can remember expressing over Balenciaga’s bags in the past concerned the brand’s first foray into perforated leather, and I don’t think I like the Balenciaga Polka Dot Bags any more.

This design features perhaps the biggest perforations I’ve ever seen on a handbag, and I can’t help but wonder how that will play into the bag’s longterm wear. Cutting that many holes of that size into a piece of leather significantly changes how the material distributes stress and weight, which will likely lead to a shorter lifespan for the bag. Of course, if you’re buying a look this bold, you probably don’t want to wear it forever; a single season might do just fine. And now that I think of it, if you’re looking for a bag in which to carry your extremely tiny dog, these might be nice, breathable options. Check out more pictures of the bags after the jump and then let us know what you think in the comments.

Balenciaga City Polka Dots, $1645 via Balenciaga

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If you love fringe, I have just the bag for you! The B-Low The Belt “Twiggy” Fringe Bag is perfect for the modern day fringe lover. You can’t even see the handbag itself because it is surrounded by fringe. I have to admit, I’ve never been a fan of anything featuring any type of fringe. [...]

I haven’t been paying much attention to Yves Saint Laurent lately. That’s really too bad because this designer has some of the most breathtaking bags you’ll ever see. Yves Saint Laurent is most popular for their classic pieces. You know, the kind you can carry for many years and they will never go out of [...]

If you’re a regular BagThatStyle reader (or a Brit), you’re probably long familiar with these two ladies, but if you’ll allow us to indulge ourselves a bit, I’d appreciate it. I’ve become slightly fascinated with Petra Ecclestone Stunt, the 23-year-old handbag designer (really, she is) and new owner of the famous Spelling Mansion, and her 27-year-old sister Tamara Ecclestone, whose resumé seems to include going on lots of fabulous vacations with her boyfriend and wearing every dress Herve Leger has every made. The most important thing that you need to know about these two women, though, is that their handbag collections are absolutely sick.

The Ecclestones are relatively unknown on this side of the Atlantic, but these heiresses have quite the pedigree, not to mention the bank accounts to back it up in a way that Paris Hilton never could. Their father, Bernie Ecclestone, is CEO of Formula One racing and has a net worth estimated at $4.2 billion. Their mother, Bernie’s ex-wife Slavica, is a former model known mostly for her work with Armani (and for being a full foot taller than Bernie) and whose 2009 divorce settlement reportedly made her a billionaire as well. These girls have money to burn, and it looks like they’ve chosen to burn a significant amount of it on handbags, particularly those from Hermes. Petra even loves bags so much that she’s designing her own line of ulta-luxe clutches, which you can check out, along with some of the most lust-worthy bags in both their closets, after the jump.

In general, Petra likes to keep her Hermes bags neutral…