Best Handbags 2021

The time to learn about the best handbags of 2021 is now. Yes, right now. This year's list is short and pointed: four bags, each chosen because it does one job beautifully - an evening bag built as a cocktail joke in crystals, a small tote dressed in crystal and pearl, a satchel built from geometry, and a tote made of teddy-soft shearling.

In a year when people were going out again, cautiously, the handbag stopped being the thing left at home. These four picks mark the return in stages: sparkle first, for the evenings people had missed; then structure, for days with places to be; then pure comfort, carried by the arm instead of worn on the body.

Evening Sparkle: Judith Leiber and Givenchy

The Judith Leiber Cosmopolitan Cocktail Beaded Bag leads the list. Add some classic cocktail-hour panache to your evening-out look with this cosmopolitan bag, or carry the crystal-studded style in hand for a witty statement. It is a bag designed as a conversation: fully beaded, shaped and studded to be looked at, holding little more than the evening requires and apologizing for none of it.

The Givenchy Mini Balle Crystal & Imitation Pearl Embellished Leather Tote takes the same sparkle and makes it daytime-legal. The base is a leather tote - a working shape - and the dressing is crystal and imitation pearl embellishment, so the bag reads as jewelry that happens to carry things. Together the two bags stake out 2021's evening position: after a year without occasions, embellishment was not excess; it was the point. The handbags product guide follows the wider category.

The Geometric Satchel: Loewe Puzzle Edge

The Loewe Puzzle Edge Small Bicolor Satchel Bag is the list's piece of engineering. The Puzzle family is built from flat geometric panels sewn so the bag folds, slouches and reshapes itself in the hand, and the Edge version sharpens that construction; in bicolor leather, the panel lines become the design, dividing the small satchel into a map of its own making.

A small satchel is also the most 2021 of sizes: bigger than the micro bags of the late 2010s, smaller than a work tote, sized for a life that was half at home and half out. For readers comparing structures, the women's designer handbags guide covers the designer category in depth, and the women's handbags guide covers the garment family from clutches to totes.

The Cozy Tote: Bottega Veneta Arco in Shearling

The Bottega Veneta Arco Shearling Tote Bag is the pandemic's comfort story translated into a luxury bag: a Bottega Veneta teddy soft dyed shearling (Italy) tote bag with leather trim. The Arco's broad, structured silhouette is kept, but the surface becomes a teddy coat for the arm - the one bag on this list you could hug, arriving in the year everyone understood why you might want to.

Shearling also closes the list's material argument. The four bags run crystal, embellished leather, bicolor panelled leather and dyed shearling - not one plain smooth-leather everyday bag among them. Texture was 2021's decoration. Trade readers can follow the category's supply side at wholesale handbags, and shoppers can compare this year with the best handbags collection across years.

Four Bags, and Why So Few

A four-bag list makes its argument by exclusion: these are the 2021 bags with a material story specific enough to retell in one line each. A cocktail in crystals. A tote wearing pearls. A satchel folded from geometry. A tote made of teddy shearling. In a year of returning occasions, the bags worth remembering were the ones you could describe to a friend without a photograph.

Learn more about consumer fashion across the consumer section, where the shoe, pandemic and shopping guides for 2021 sit alongside this one. Thank you for using the Apparel Search website.

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