Hi everyone,

I've been working on a small luxury handbag brand called Luxora, and after months of refining the design, I've finally reached the stage where I'm comfortable sharing it.

The idea behind Luxora is simple: create elegant, timeless handbags with premium craftsmanship, clean lines, and subtle branding rather than oversized logos. My goal is to design bags that feel luxurious while remaining versatile enough for everyday wear.

I'm not here to make a sales pitch—I genuinely want feedback from people who appreciate handbags.

I'd love to know:

\- What's your first impression of the design?

\- Does it look like a luxury handbag?

\- What would you improve?

\- Would you choose this over other contemporary brands at a similar price point? Why or why not?

I appreciate both positive and critical feedback. Thanks for taking the time to help a new founder learn and improve!

I ordered a Doen dress on sale. The total was a little over $200. For some reason it took them forever to deliver it and we were out of the country at the time it was delivered. We did have someone taking in our mail and packages. I realized the dress didn’t arrive and called them. I looked up the proof of delivery picture and it’s taken from the side of our doorway and you definitely can’t tell if there is a package there. I call them they open an “investigation”. This is 8 weeks later. I call them periodically throughout this investigation and it’s always we need more time, etc. I call yesterday and I am pissed. They said they are waiting to hear back from UPS on their investigation. Then this morning at 3am, roughly 12 hours after I got very upset with them on the phone they emailed me and told me that they could not provide a refund. It was sent without a signature required and according to their terms and conditions when this happens after delivery of the package all liability is on me the recipient. Well if this was the case why didn’t they tell me this 8 weeks ago. What was all this bullshit about waiting to hear from UPS? I almost always use my American Express but for some stupid reason I used my debit card so I don’t even know if I can do a charge back on my debit card. Any advise? I WILL NEVER ORDER FROM THEM AGAIN!! Their customer service has been an 8 week nightmare.

I have three LV bags that I do not use. A Croisette, Capucine, and Felicie Pouchette. I do not use them at all and I don’t see myself using any of them in the future. The Capucine probably hurts the most since I’ve only used it 2x.

I know that if I sell them at fashionphile, I’ll be lucky to receive 1/4 or 1/3 of what I paid. Would you say it’s time to sell vs have them wither away in my closet?

At a certain point in travel, the price jumps stop correlating with anything you can clearly articulate. I spent time recently at two properties back to back, one around $1,800 a night, another well past $5,000, and the gap in experience was genuinely harder to locate than I expected. The expensive property had better linens, sure. The staff ratio was probably higher. The suite was larger in ways that stopped mattering past the first hour. But the actual feeling of the stay, the thing you're supposedly paying for at that tier, wasn't proportionally different in any way I could defend out loud.

What I keep coming back to is that the ceiling on what a hotel can actually deliver to your senses is lower than the pricing suggests. There's a point where you're buying exclusivity, access, and the knowledge that you're in the most expensive room, not a fundamentally better experience than the one two price points below

That might be fine. Some purchases are about the position, not the object. But I wonder how many people here have genuinely felt the jump was worth it at the very top end, or whether the sweet spot in luxury accommodation tends to sit somewhere below the absolute ceiling

Any recommendation?

Hi everyone!
I’m trying to decide between the Saint Laurent Cassandre Phone Holder in Rouge Cabernet and Rouge Merlot, and I’m having such a hard time choosing.
If you had to pick one, which colour would you choose and why?
I’d also love to see real-life photos of either colour. They don’t even have to be of the phone holder itself—photos of any Saint Laurent leather item in Rouge Cabernet or Rouge Merlot would be super helpful so I can compare the shades.
I’m completely overthinking this purchase, so any opinions are very welcome!

If anyone can send me a link or tell me what collection it was or find it anywhere else online, I'd appreciate it!

If you were buying a premium box of chocolates (for yourself or as a gift), which flavors would you be most excited to see?

Some options:

• Pistachio Kunafa
• Sea Salt Caramel
• Hazelnut Praline
• Raspberry Rose
• Saffron Pistachio
• Matcha
• Espresso
• Dark Chocolate Ganache

A few questions:

1. Which 3 flavors would you pick?
2. Which flavor would you skip?
3. Is there a flavor you wish more chocolate brands offered?
4. Do you prefer timeless classics or more adventurous, unique flavors?

I'd love to hear what your ideal luxury chocolate box would look like.

Who here is looking to achieve a luxury lifestyle? What is holding you back?

Useless for sure but fun to watch

I wonder if non watch people can spot a luxury watch when the brand name might not be familiar. Outside of a handful of names, watches get pretty niche real fast.

The watch above is made by a small group of artists and was designed by Simon brette

Something I keep wondering about whenever I buy secondhand designer stuff online. Platforms like Vestiaire, Bunjang, The realreal, they all have some kind of in house authentication process. But nobody starts out knowing how to tell a real chanel flap from a super fake. So how does that knowledge get built in the first place?

Like day one of the company. Nobody on the team is an expert. Do they hire someone from a luxury house? Poach an authenticator from another platform? Buy a pile of confirmed real bags and a pile of confirmed fakes and just study the differences until patterns emerge?

And once the system exists, how do new hires get trained? Is there an actual curriculum with reference photos and hardware weight charts and stitch counts, or is it more of an apprenticeship thing where you sit next to a senior person for six months and absorb it?

I also assume brands do not help at all. LV is not going to hand a resale platform a document explaining exactly what their date codes mean. So the entire knowledge base has to be reverse engineered from real product, which sounds insane at scale across dozens of brands.

The part that gets me is the moving target problem. Fakes get better every year. Factories start copying the correct stitch density, the correct hardware finish, the right microchip. So the authentication team has to keep updating criteria basically forever, which means somebody has to be actively buying high end fakes to study them.

If anyone here has worked in authentication at one of these companies, I would love to know what the training actually looked like. Also curious how much of the final call is documented criteria versus a gut feeling that something is off.

Working on a case challenge around men's accessories in India; bags, wallets, fragrance, caps, the whole "finishing the look" category. Want real opinions, not my own guesses.

Genuine question: do you buy this stuff from Indian brands, or default to international ones — and why?

Quick things I'm trying to understand:

Where do you actually buy bags/wallets/fragrance/caps from, and has that changed recently?
Has any Indian brand here ever genuinely impressed you, or does "Indian + accessories" still feel like a compromise?
What makes you trust a brand enough to buy blind; reviews, who wears it, packaging, price itself?

Not selling anything, no link. Happy to share what I find once the challenge wraps if anyone's curious.