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

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. This is a specification-led comparison, not an impression-led one, setting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices against each other line by line. All of it comes from what the brand states on its own product pages and from prices observed in the market in 2026 — observations, 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. In short, the Soft is not a cheaper or lazier Margaux; it is the more equipped of the two. The full version is below.

Two Bags, One Name, and One Confusing Year

The original Margaux is the flagship on which the brand built its handbag reputation, an unlined-looking tote that draws its structure from leather thickness and panel shaping rather than stiffeners. The Soft Margaux appeared as a related yet separately specified bag, with construction details and product pages of its own. During 2025 the original was withdrawn from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now leads with the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder rather than the original.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 yves saint laurent bags confirmed it, and that 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. The comparison is thus between a current product and an archive one, and that changes the weight the specification differences should hold.

The Spec Sheet, Side by Side

The difference shows most cleanly when the features the Soft version adds are isolated and checked one by one. There are five in total, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it reads from across a street. Protective metal feet hold the base away from the ground. The open-top shape gets a way to shut thanks to an interior toggle closure. Belted side gussets let the profile be cinched or released. Adding a zip pocket and card slots turns a deep cavity into an organised interior. The table arranges them with observed 2026 figures for the versions still 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 tells you 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 stated for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. Suede and canvas versions read different in the hand and, more importantly, behave differently on resale.

Hardware and How You Carry It

On the Soft Margaux the hardware is palladium-plated, matte rather than polished in finish, consistent with the rest of the collection. The signature element on any Margaux is its pair of adjustable side buckles, and on genuine examples the buckles are engraved, as 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 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 trades that arrangement entirely for elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, so it is built from the start 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.

The Sizes and the Numbers Behind Them

The number in the name is just the width of the bag in inches, which makes this family easier to navigate than most. At 10 x 7 x 7.5 inches, the Soft Margaux 10 is genuinely compact yet unusually deep for its footprint. The Soft Margaux 12 runs 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, same depth with two inches more width and two more of height, and that is the size most buyers land on for daily use. The Margaux Shoulder 12 comes in at 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, which makes it the widest and shallowest of the three despite the 12 in its name, as the number denotes the bag’s stated size rather than its maximum external span. A Soft Margaux 15 is in circulation, while a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution has been carried by Selfridges. Neither of them has a verifiable retail price, so any figure quoted for them should be treated as an asking price rather than a documented one.

What Each One Costs and What Resale Is Doing

On observed 2026 market pricing, the Soft Margaux 10 sits at $3,650, the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350 and the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. Those figures put the whole family in the collection’s top band, next to 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 pushed 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 Version to Buy

The straightforward answer for anyone who wants the bag they can actually purchase new, with a warranty of availability and the fuller specification, is the Soft Margaux. Choose the 10 if you carry little and want the shape at its most sculptural, and the 12 if you want a working bag, since the second card slot and the zip pocket only appear at that size. Settle on the Margaux Shoulder 12 when the arm rather than the hand is how you carry, as its tubular handles and narrowed gussets exist for that purpose. Only pursue the original on resale if the archive version is specifically what you want and you are comfortable going without metal feet, a toggle closure or interior organisation. Whatever the choice, the brand runs no public authenticity coding system of any kind, so verification comes down to 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. Size comes next: the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
3. Then material, keeping in mind that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. Consider an original on the secondary market only at that point