Shop: J. Crew Edie Purse in Flame

This season's must have purses are slimmed down, polished and in bright hues or funky fabrics. I guess it's not a big surprise since the past few seasons have been all about the large, slouchy boho bags. That's fashion for you, once you manage to collect all the trendy pieces that you love, they flip the script and suddenly what you are wearing is 'so 5 minutes ago!'. I have finally found skinny jeans that fit well and are not too low cut, so I cringed when I saw that full flare pants were back - thankfully, it seems all styles of jeans can co-exist for the time being. Phew!

Back to handbags....I shouldn't complain, any excuse to buy a new purse is a good excuse. The thing is, I like a big purse. The stuff (i.e. crap) I carry around has grown to meet the size capacity of my hobo bag, and now I find it hard to pare down. For a night out, I have to think long and hard about what goes into my itty bitty clutch and I'm always relieved to go back to my shoulder bag, no matter how cute a hand held purse is. The bags that are on trend this season are somewhere in the middle of these two size extremes.

After much searching, I decided on the J. Crew Edie shoulder purse in Flame. It has a bit more storage space than a few of the other models out there, and I think the color will really pop. I use to always lean towards black, but I'm less afraid of colour as I use to be, and think one just says 'summer' to me.

Photo Courtesy of J. Crew

  There was also a slimmer J. crew option, call Tillary in dark poppy. I decided against it because of it's size, but I loved that it can be converted to a clutch.

Photo courtesy of J. Crew

Kate Spade purses are just gorgeous, I love the quality of the materials they use, the structure, the cute embellishments. The Kate Spade 'Charlize' in black has that Chanel quilting that has kind of grown on me. I don't want a purse that's trying to be Chanel (and I can't rationalize buying a real Chanel ...yet), so it needs to have it's own style, and I think they really pulled it off with this one.

Photo courtesy of Kate Spade

 The other Kate Spade that I nearly bought was the Harlow. A while back, I had a purse just like this  from Danier leather, but the Kate version has the 14k gold accents that really elevate it. Ironically I just gave away the Danier purse after holding onto it for years thinking the style would come back eventually. Lesson learned? I wish, but my closet real estate dictates that some things do need to be moved out of rotation eventually. I'll just need to be smarter about what makes the cut.

Photo courtesy of Kate Spade

Photo courtesy of Kate Spade

I made sure to check out Michael Kors, Banana Republic and Marc by Marc Jacobs before making the purchase but I found that they haven't really produced anything new & noteworthy using this year's shapes (tote, satchel, clutch). In the end I just liked the shape of the Edie purse better than the others, and the color really sold it for me. I also got it at a much better than retail price, so that kinda cinched it for me. Can't wait till it (and the Spring-like weather) arrives!