Revenge of the BAG LADY

She was working from home for a while, but she's back on the scene, and she's packed on the purses. Double your pleasure, double your fun?

-  KRISTEN BATEMAN

A busy New York fashion designer was recently photographed on her morning commute through the streets of Manhattan. If she was moving slowly enough to be captured by the paparazzi, it might have had something to do with the Leviathans on her back, a pair of massive black leather carryalls, one on each shoulder. It will come as no surprise that one of the bags, the Margaux, was her own creation; it's such a behemoth the diminutive Mary-Kate Olsen could have practically fit inside. The Row, the label she founded with sister Ashley, may be an avatar of minimalism, but in packing on the purses Olsen was a walking billboard for a maximalist trend taking hold on runways from New York to Paris and in the wardrobes of the world's most obsessive collectors. The It bag, it turns out, is not dead-it's proliferating, and bundling them is the order of the day. With supply chain disruptions and inflationary anxieties leading to tightened inventories, demand is scalding hot, and customers seem to be playing a game of Pokémon: Gotta catch 'em all.

"Prices are skyrocketing, and people are trying to grab as much as they can, because they think it's a very good investment," says Jane Angert, the founder of the site JaneFinds, which specializes in the sale of rare Hermès handbags.