Elevated Everyday Shoulder Bag Shop The Row Bags – Bo Hampton

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

Ask five different people how the Margaux and the Soft Margaux differ and you will hear five confident, contradictory answers. The confusion is understandable, because the two bags share a name, a silhouette and a set of signature buckles, and because the shopping situation around them changed sharply in 2025. What follows is a specification-led comparison rather than an impression-led one: measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices, set against each other line by line. The material here draws 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. If a figure is not reliably documented, that is stated here instead of guessed at, because the Margaux is the single most misquoted bag in the label’s catalogue. The short answer is that the Soft is not a cheaper or lazier Margaux — it is the better equipped one. The long version is below.

Two Bags Sharing a Name Through a Complicated Year

The original Margaux is the flagship on which the brand built its handbag reputation, an unlined-looking tote that derives its structure from leather thickness and panel shaping rather than stiffeners. The Soft Margaux arrived as a related but separately specified bag, with its own construction details and its own product pages. The original was withdrawn from third-party retailers during 2025, and the brand’s own webstore now presents the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder in its place. Widely reported as discontinued, it has never been officially confirmed as such by the brand, and the distinction is not pedantry when you are deciding what to pay on the secondary market. What that means in practice is simple: the Soft Margaux is buyable new, and the original is a resale proposition. Anyone comparing the two is therefore comparing a current product against an archive one, which changes how the specification differences should be weighted.

Two Spec Sheets, Compared

The clearest way rowbag.com/shoulder-bags to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and check them one at a time. There are five of them, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it looks from across a street. The base is kept off the ground by protective metal feet. The open-top shape gets a way to shut thanks to an interior toggle closure. The profile can be cinched or released because of the belted side gussets. A zip pocket and card slots turn a deep cavity into something organised. The table lays them out with observed 2026 figures for the versions still sold new.

Feature	Soft Margaux 10 and 12	Original Margaux
Protective metal feet	Fitted	Absent from the specification
Interior toggle closure	Present	Not specified
Belted side gussets	Fitted as standard	Not part of the specification
Zip pocket	Present on the 12	Absent from the specification
Card slots	One on the 10, two on the 12	Not part of the specification
Market price, observed 2026	$3,650 and $4,350	Available on resale only

The Materials and What Lines Them

Stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both lined in cotton herringbone. A lot about the brand’s priorities sits in that lining, because cotton herringbone inside is a textile decision rather than a branding one, holding shape without the plastic feel of a coated logo jacquard. The Margaux Shoulder 12 takes it further with a 100 percent lambskin lining, which is softer, marks more readily and costs considerably more 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. In the hand, suede and canvas versions read differently, and on resale they behave differently too.

The Hardware, the Buckles and the Handles

Hardware on the Soft Margaux is palladium-plated, and it is finished matte rather than polished, in keeping with the rest of the collection. What signs any Margaux is the pair of adjustable side buckles; on genuine examples they are engraved, and so are the base feet where feet are fitted. The buckles are functional, not decorative, because they are what allows the belted gussets to change the width of the bag. The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 share a 5-inch handle drop, which is a hand-carry or crook-of-the-elbow figure and not a shoulder one, so both come with a removable shoulder strap to cover it. The Margaux Shoulder 12 discards that arrangement for elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, designed from the outset to sit under the arm. If you want a single The Row bag that works hands-free without a strap, the Shoulder answers that rather than the Soft.

Sizes and What the Numbers Mean

The number in the name is only the width of the bag in inches, which 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 gaining two inches of width and two of height, and that is the size most buyers settle on for daily use. The Margaux Shoulder 12 measures 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, so despite the 12 in its name it is the widest and shallowest of the three, since the number refers to the bag’s stated size rather than its maximum external span. There is a Soft Margaux 15 in circulation, and Selfridges has carried a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution. No verifiable retail price exists for either, so read any figure quoted for them as an asking price and not a documented one.

What They Cost and How Resale Behaves

In observed 2026 market pricing the Soft Margaux 10 is $3,650 and the Soft Margaux 12 is $4,350, while the Margaux Shoulder 12 is $4,900. The family therefore sits in the collection’s top band, alongside the India and Agnes top handles and the Marlo totes. The secondary market picture is an unusual one: the Rebag CLAIR 2025 report recorded the Margaux Tote at 107 percent value retention, inside a brand-level figure of 97 percent that lifted the label into the report’s unicorn tier for the first time. Softer secondary figures point the same way, 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. A major resale authenticator puts new Margaux bags in the $5,000 to $9,000 range, a useful sanity check, since anything advertised in the hundreds is almost certainly counterfeit. None of it amounts to investment advice, and canvas, nylon and seasonal-colour versions are worth remembering as the ones that discount rather than appreciate.

Which Version to Choose

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. Pick the 10 for light carrying and the shape at its most sculptural; pick the 12 for a working bag, as the second card slot and the zip pocket only arrive at that size. Take the Margaux Shoulder 12 if you carry under the arm rather than in the hand, since its tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for precisely that. Chase 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. Where resale matters, black or neutral calfskin is the buy, and where it does not, buy the colour you genuinely want.

Decide hand-carry or shoulder first, because that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
Then settle size, with the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
Then material, bearing in mind that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
And only then look at an original on the secondary market