Why le pliage

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View on Instagram. Six years after purchasing my first Le Pliage, I've grown my collection: I now own one in navy a gift from a family friend and one in black a gift to myself after a trip to Paris last fall. It's the bag that carries my laptop to work, and my weekender when I'm heading out of town for a quick trip. The simple, logo-free design matches everything I own. And with its weather-resistant coating, I know it's durable enough to take anywhere.

While I have a handful of other totes in my closet, I reach for Le Pliage more than any other. I think Heitlinger sums up my and so many other's loyalty to the nylon bag best: "Whereas other bags may be seen as classics, there's something timeless and unassuming about a Le Pliage. Halie LeSavage is the fashion associate at Glamour. Follow her halielesavage. By Krystin Arneson. By Alexandra Ilyashov. Rewards Free Stuff Promos. Buy Now. Experience this nostalgia for yourself at their exclusive pop-up for a limited time only at Paragon.

About Contacts Follow us facebook instagram. Recommended posts for you. Fashion Gucci celebrates the reopening of its flagship store at The Shoppes At Marina Bay The star-studded event included more than just one reason to celebrate, since also mark's the fashion house's th anniversary. A woman, now, has multiple handbags, multiple pairs of shoes, multiple scarves, each one expressing a different perspective about her and a different piece of her identity.

It's almost been an anthropological shift, where we've moved from function to fashion. At the same time, we've seen lots of competitors come into the space. Traditionally, particularly in leather making, there were specialty houses, companies that were skilled in choosing the right materials, selecting the very best leather, and carefully and meticulously crafting that into beautiful products.

Today, we have literally every fashion brand in the leather space. People who have started in soft goods, ready-to-wear fashion, have moved into handbags, and shoes, and other accessory categories. It's getting a lot more crowded. The traditions are falling by the wayside for many of these new companies who are imitating but not replicating the craftsmanship of the true leather makers.

Kenny: Does that constitute the accessible luxury category? They're sort of mass producing things that have a brand, but they're not doing it in a way that's really consistent with the tradition of luxury goods.

Avery: I think accessible luxury is accessible on two parts. It's accessible from a price perspective. Accessible luxury products are priced lower than traditional luxury. They're also accessible from a distribution standpoint. They're widely available, distributed widely, loose restrictions on distribution, lots of licensing opportunities.

Consumers are able to buy into these brands … much more than they would for traditional brands. What you're seeing the accessible luxury brands do is borrow the codes of high luxury, of traditional luxury, but shortcut some of the traditions and the processes, the materials, the workmanship, the artisanry of traditional luxury.

Accessible luxury looks like luxury, but it actually is fundamentally different, and that's what enables them to have a lower cost base and therefore support lower pricing.

Kenny: Longchamp did it differently with their Le Pliage. They've been able to find an accessible product that still holds true to the traditions that the company had.

Avery: Le Pliage is really interesting. It's almost a paradox in itself. It's a luxury product at a low price. It's priced at about 55 euros, much lower than the rest of Longchamp's line, but meticulously crafted in their own workshops.

It's beautifully constructed. It's functional and fashionable. It's chic and timeless. It's one of these products that has become an icon and has lived on through the ages.

The challenge with the product for Longchamp is it tends to anchor the brand in that accessible luxury space. Its lower price point, its wider accessibility, makes the brand be perceived as more of an accessible luxury brand than Jean and Sophie would like the brand to be. Part of their goal for growth is to move the brand closer to traditional luxury, to higher luxury, to what they call optimistic luxury, moving it away from the accessible luxury space.

Every time they make moves in that direction, the success of Le Pliage pulls them back down closer to accessible luxury. Kenny: Is there any disagreement in the family about Le Pliage? If they really went full bore with it, they could make all the profit that they need off of it, but there seems to be a tension there.

A quick way to grow the company, if you want to achieve that double-digit growth, is to unleash some of the restrictions on Le Pliage. We could distribute Le Pliage more widely. We could license Le Pliage for other products. We talked about foldable shoes, or foldable T-shirts, or opening Le Pliage-only shops, and really unleashing this brand that has tremendous energy and excitement behind it.

But every time we got too excited about that, we started to worry about what would be the impact of Le Pliage on Longchamp? When you talk to many people outside of France, in particular, about Longchamp, they talk about Le Pliage. I think the challenge for the brand is keeping Le Pliage going and leveraging its strength and excitement, but really refocusing customers' attention on the core Longchamp brand and its leather handbag collection and other goods.