Everyday Luxury Bag The Row Tote Bag

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

Ask five people what the difference is between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux and you will get five confident, contradictory answers. The confusion is entirely understandable: the two bags share a name, a silhouette and a set of signature buckles, and the shopping situation around them changed sharply in 2025. What follows is specification-led rather than impression-led — measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices, placed against each other line by line. Everything here is sourced from what the brand states on its product pages and from prices observed in the market in 2026, which are observations and not 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 long version is below.

One Name, Two Bags, and a Complicated Year

The brand built its handbag reputation on the original Margaux, an unlined-looking tote whose structure comes from leather thickness and panel shaping instead of stiffeners. The Soft Margaux entered as a related but separately specified bag, carrying its own construction details and its own product pages. During 2025 the original was removed from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now leads with the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder rather than the original. Its discontinuation has been widely reported, though the brand has never officially confirmed it, and that distinction is not pedantry when you are deciding what to pay on the secondary market. Practically speaking, the Soft Margaux is the one you can buy new and the original is now a resale proposition. Anyone comparing the two is really comparing a current product with the row bags white shoulder bags an archive one, and that changes how the specification differences should be weighted.

Side by Side on the Spec Sheet

The cleanest way to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and check them one at a time. Five of them exist, and as a group they change daily behaviour rather than how the bag looks from across a street. The base is kept off the ground by protective metal feet. The open-top shape gains a way to shut thanks to an interior toggle closure. Belted side gussets allow the profile to be drawn in or let out. Adding a zip pocket and card slots turns a deep cavity into organised storage. The table below sets these out alongside the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

Exterior Materials and Linings

Both the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, and both are lined in cotton herringbone. That choice of lining says a great deal about the brand’s priorities, since a cotton herringbone interior is a textile decision rather than a branding one, and it holds shape without the plastic feel of a coated logo jacquard. The Margaux Shoulder 12 goes a step further, lining the bag in 100 percent lambskin — softer, more easily marked and considerably more expensive to work with. Across the wider family the exteriors extend to grained calfskin, saddle calfskin, suede, canvas paired with leather, and nylon, so a Margaux is not automatically a smooth-leather bag. On the brand’s own product pages, Made in Italy is given for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. The suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, crucially, perform differently on resale.

Hardware and How You Carry It

Hardware on the Soft Margaux is palladium-plated and finished matte rather than polished, consistent with the rest of the collection. What identifies 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 rather than decorative, since they are what let the belted gussets change the width of the bag. The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 both run a 5-inch handle drop, which is 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 discards that arrangement for elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, designed from the outset to sit under the arm. If you want one The Row bag that works hands-free without a strap, the Shoulder is the answer rather than the Soft.

Sizes and What the Numbers Mean

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 measures 10 x 7 x 7.5 inches, which is a genuinely compact bag with an unusual amount of depth for its footprint. The Soft Margaux 12 measures 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, holding 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. The Margaux Shoulder 12 measures 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, so despite carrying a 12 in its name it is the widest and the shallowest of the three, because 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 Each Costs, and What Resale Is Doing

Observed 2026 market pricing places the Soft Margaux 10 at $3,650, the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350 and the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. That places the entire family in the collection’s top band, alongside 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 carried the label into the report’s unicorn tier for the first time. Softer secondary figures point in the same direction: the Margaux is reported to sell frequently at around 40 percent above retail, Fashionphile resale is reported up roughly 44 percent year on year, and The RealReal reports pre-owned Margaux sales averaging about 15 percent over original retail. A major resale authenticator places new Margaux bags in the $5,000 to $9,000 range, which is a useful sanity check: 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 One to Buy

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 show up at that size. Choose the Margaux Shoulder 12 if the way you carry a bag is under the arm rather than in the hand, because its tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for exactly that. Pursue 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. Whichever one you pick, note that the brand operates no public authenticity coding system at all, so verification rests on stitching, hand-painted edges, stamp placement and the weight and finish of the hardware. Buy black or neutral calfskin if resale matters to you; buy whatever colour you like if it does not.

1. Answer hand-carry or shoulder first of all, as it divides Soft from Shoulder immediately
2. Then fix size, with the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
3. Then material, remembering that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. Consider an original on the secondary market only at that point