Bryce Gruber went looking at a small Bottega Veneta purse this summer, saw the $5,000 tag and flinched. So the 42-year-old, who writes a shopping newsletter, bought Miu Miu ballet flats for $1,070 instead — and felt reasonable doing it. That’s the state of luxury fashion right now, Chavie Lieber reports on the cover of the weekend Off Duty section: handbag prices have climbed so far that four-figure shoes read as the sensible choice, and the shoe is now where a luxury habit starts.
The numbers behind the feeling: Chanel’s medium flap bag carries an $11,700 tag today against $5,800 in 2019, with labor and materials costs still pushing bag prices up. Demand for the brand’s flats has climbed right along with its bag prices. Lindsay Breen, a 34-year-old bank recruiter in Toronto, recently bought a $1,175 green croc-embossed pair instead of a Chanel bag she said cost as much as a big family vacation. Kelly Levian, whose concierge service the Coveted hunts down rare luxury goods, says her team has tracked down more than 200 pairs of Chanel’s denim flats since July; they start at $1,075. Her clients will buy a favorite shoe in several colors, while a pricey bag is a rarer, more deliberate purchase.
The bag market shrank. The shoe rack got interesting
Bain & Company’s June 2026 data put luxury-bag retail sales down 10% since 2023 — roughly $8 billion a year in spending that went away. Luxury shoe sales have been falling for a few years as well, though the paper reports heels and statement styles are starting to turn, and a McKinsey–Business of Fashion report predicts footwear becomes the accessible way into a brand. Khaite founder Catherine Holstein says her bag sales are healthy but footwear is up 100% this year versus last: the same customer who drops $4,000 on three pairs of shoes without a second thought will agonize for a year over a $4,000 bag and walk away. Mytheresa says footwear growth has overtaken handbags, and Larroudé has sold more than 30,000 pairs of its $375 boat shoe since last year. Maegan Watson, a New York stylist to ultrahigh-net-worth families and executive women, says her clients aren’t priced out of the $6,000 bag — they just can’t justify it. Their test: “Can I? Yes. But will I? No.”
Our read
This is anchoring, and it’s doing most of the work here. A $1,070 flat isn’t cheap; it’s cheap next to an $11,700 bag, and the bag’s price tag got there first. The cash-flow move (M5) is to measure a splurge against your own spending plan rather than the priciest thing on the shelf — the flat competes with your quarter’s discretionary line, not with Chanel. Watson’s clients carry the better tool, and it’s two questions: can I, and will I. The first is about affordability; the second is about whether the thing earns its place. Most impulse buys pass the first and fail the second.
One aside for the time-value crowd (M3): the flap bag doubled in seven years, which by our arithmetic is roughly 10.5% a year compounded — the rule of 72 working on a price tag instead of a portfolio. That’s a reason to admire the shoes, not to treat either purchase as an asset. Buy the shoe you’ll wear; skip the bag you’d carry mainly to justify its price. And if the discretionary line itself is the mystery, fifteen minutes with a statement usually finds where it went.