Luxury Leather Edit The Row Black Bag

Soft Margaux vs the Original Margaux at The Row, Spec by Spec

Ask five people to describe the difference between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux and you will hear five confident, contradictory answers. That confusion makes sense, since the two bags share a name, a silhouette and a set of signature buckles, and since the shopping situation around them moved sharply in 2025. Below is a specification-led comparison rather than an impression-led one, putting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices side by side line by line. The material here is built on what the brand states on its product pages plus prices observed in the market in 2026, which remain observations rather than an official price list. Where a figure is not reliably documented, this article says so rather than guessing, since the Margaux is the single most misquoted bag in the label’s catalogue. The short version is that the Soft is not a cheaper or lazier Margaux; it is a more equipped one. The longer version is set out below.

Two Bags, One Name, One Complicated Year

The original Margaux is the flagship the brand built its handbag reputation on, an unlined-looking tote whose structure derives from leather thickness and panel shaping rather than from stiffeners. The Soft Margaux arrived as a related but separately specified bag, with its own construction details and its own product pages. During 2025 the original was withdrawn from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now leads with the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder rather than the original. Reports of its discontinuation are widespread, but no official confirmation has ever come from the brand, and that difference tells rather than being pedantry when you are setting a price on the secondary market. In practice this means the Soft Margaux is the version obtainable new, while the original has become a resale proposition. Anyone comparing the two is therefore comparing a current product against an archive https://therowofficial.com/shoulder-bags/ one, which changes how the specification differences should be weighed.

Two Spec Sheets, Side by Side

The difference shows most cleanly when the features the Soft version adds are isolated and checked one by one. There are five in total, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it appears from across a street. Protective metal feet hold the base clear of the ground. An interior toggle closure gives the open-top shape a way to shut. Belted side gussets let the profile be cinched or released. A zip pocket and card slots turn a deep cavity into something organised. The table sets these out with the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

The Materials and What Lines Them

The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, and both are lined in cotton herringbone. That lining choice tells you a fair amount about the brand’s priorities, because a cotton herringbone interior is a textile decision rather than a branding one, and it holds shape without adding the plastic feel of a coated logo jacquard. The Margaux Shoulder 12 goes further and lines the bag in 100 percent lambskin, which is softer, more easily marked and considerably more expensive to work with. Exterior materials across the wider family include grained calfskin, saddle calfskin, suede, canvas paired with leather, and nylon, which means a Margaux is not automatically a smooth-leather bag. Made in Italy is stated on the brand’s own product pages for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12, and for the Margaux Shoulder 12 as well. Suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, importantly, behave differently on resale.

The Hardware, the Buckles and the Handles

On the Soft Margaux the hardware is palladium-plated, matte rather than polished in finish, in line with the rest of the collection. The signature element on any Margaux is its pair of adjustable side buckles, and on genuine examples the buckles are engraved, as are the base feet where feet are fitted. The buckles are functional rather than decorative, since they are what let the belted gussets change the width of the bag. Both the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 run a 5-inch handle drop, a hand-carry or crook-of-the-elbow measurement rather than a shoulder one, and both include a removable shoulder strap to cover the difference. The Margaux Shoulder 12 trades that arrangement entirely for elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, so it is built from the start to sit under the arm. For one The Row bag that carries hands-free without a strap, the answer is the Shoulder and not the Soft.

What the Size Numbers Actually Tell You

The name’s number gives nothing more than the bag’s width in inches, and that makes the family easier to navigate than most. The Soft Margaux 10 arrives at 10 x 7 x 7.5 inches, genuinely compact with an unusual amount of depth for the footprint. The Soft Margaux 12 measures 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, keeping the same depth while adding two inches of width and two of height, and it is the size most buyers settle on for daily use. At 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, the Margaux Shoulder 12 is the widest and shallowest of the three notwithstanding the 12 in its name, because that number refers to the bag’s stated size and not its maximum external span. A Soft Margaux 15 is in circulation, while a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution has been carried by Selfridges. No verifiable retail price exists for either, so read any figure quoted for them as an asking price and not a documented one.

What Each Costs, and What Resale Is Doing

In observed 2026 market pricing the Soft Margaux 10 sits at $3,650 and the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350, with the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. Those figures set the whole family in the collection’s top band, next to the India and Agnes top handles and the Marlo totes. On the secondary market the picture is unusual: the Rebag CLAIR 2025 report put the Margaux Tote at 107 percent value retention, part of a brand-level figure of 97 percent that pushed the label into the report’s unicorn tier for the first time. Looser secondary figures agree, with the Margaux reported to sell frequently at around 40 percent above retail, Fashionphile resale reported up roughly 44 percent year on year, and The RealReal reporting pre-owned Margaux sales averaging about 15 percent over original retail. New Margaux bags are placed in the $5,000 to $9,000 range by a major resale authenticator, which makes a useful sanity check: anything advertised in the hundreds is almost certainly counterfeit. This is not investment advice, and it is worth remembering that canvas, nylon and seasonal-colour versions discount rather than appreciating.

Which Version Suits You

If you want the bag you can actually purchase new, with a warranty of availability and the fuller specification, the Soft Margaux is the straightforward answer. Choose the 10 if you carry little and want the shape at its most sculptural, and the 12 if you want a working bag, since the second card slot and the zip pocket only appear at that size. The Margaux Shoulder 12 is the pick if your carry is under the arm rather than in the hand, because tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for exactly that. Go looking for the original on resale only if you specifically want the archive version and you are comfortable buying without metal feet, a toggle closure or interior organisation. Whatever the choice, the brand runs no public authenticity coding system at all, so verification comes down to stitching, hand-painted edges, stamp placement and the weight and finish of the hardware. If resale matters, buy black or neutral calfskin, and if it does not, buy whatever colour you like.

1. Nail down hand-carry or shoulder first, since that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
2. Size comes next: the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
3. Then choose material, mindful that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. Only after that should an original on the secondary market enter the picture