If you were faced with the choice between the latest, most fabulous arm candy (insert it-bag of choice here) or a pair of the hottest heels around (let's just say Louboutins), which would you choose?
Well, according to fashion writer Hannah Betts (among others, actually), we're all about the shoes nowadays, with the 'it-bag' firmly entrenched in the background. "Farewell, arm candy, hello, foot bauble," she says.
Betts wrote in The Daily Telegraph just recently, that this all began with these immortal words uttered by Miuccia Prada:
"The obsession with handbags has finished a little now. It feels over. It's about shoes."
It appears we are sick of being told each week which is the latest-and-greatest, and seeing everyone from WAGs to schoolkids (with cheap knock-offs) toting the same bag we just forked out a good thousand pounds for.
As Christos Garkinos, co-owner of designer consignment store Decades Two, told the Los Angeles Times: "A bag is only an 'it' bag when it's not accessible to everyone."
And with the amount of counterfeit and blatant high-street copycat shenanigans going on, these bags are becoming more and more accessible to the mainstream. So what to do?
It appears shoes are the obvious next place to turn. Unlike a handbag, not everybody suits or indeed, can wear particular styles, thus limiting accessibility. They're harder to maintain and you would have to be truly dedicated to shell out for an accessory which has a much, much shorter shelf life than a handbag.
And so now we wonder - has the it-shoe really taken over? What will this mean for the humble handbag? Will we start to see less copycat fashion and more individualism? I guess all we can do now is wait and see!
Will you be hanging up your designer handbags to go it-shoe crazy?
