YSL Luxury Collection Curated Selection

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

Pose the difference between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux to five people and five confident, contradictory answers come back. 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 shifted 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. Everything here comes from what the brand states on its product pages and from prices observed in the market in 2026, which are observations rather than an official price list. If a figure is not reliably documented, that is flagged here instead of guessed at, because the Margaux is the single most misquoted bag in the label’s catalogue. The short version: the Soft is neither a cheaper nor a lazier Margaux, it is the better equipped one. The long version is below.

Two Bags Sharing a Name Through 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 arrived as a related but separately specified bag, with 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. What that means in practice is simple: the Soft Margaux is buyable new, and the original is a resale proposition. Comparing the two therefore means setting a current product against an archive one, which changes how much weight the specification differences deserve.

The Spec Sheet, Compared Side by Side

The clearest way ysl shoulder bag to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and work through them one at a time. There are five in total, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it appears from across a street. Protective metal feet hold the base away from the ground. An interior toggle closure hands the open-top shape a way to close. Belted side gussets allow the profile to be pulled in or let out. A zip pocket and card slots turn a deep cavity into something organised. These are set out in the table with the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

The Materials and What Lines Them

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. A good deal 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 goes further and lines the bag in 100 percent lambskin, which is softer, more easily marked and considerably more expensive 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. The brand’s own product pages state Made in Italy for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. 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 finished matte rather than polished, in keeping with the rest of the collection. The signature element on any Margaux is the pair of adjustable side buckles, and on genuine examples those buckles are engraved, as 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 replaces that arrangement entirely with elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, so it is designed from the start to sit under the arm. Where the requirement is one The Row bag that goes hands-free without a strap, the Shoulder is the answer, not 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 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 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 choose for daily use. At 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, the Margaux Shoulder 12 is the widest and shallowest of the three notwithstanding the 12 in its name, because that number refers to the bag’s stated size and not its maximum external span. A Soft Margaux 15 is out there as well, and a leather-and-canvas Margaux 17 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 They Cost and How Resale Reacts

Observed 2026 market pricing puts the Soft Margaux 10 at $3,650, the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350 and the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. The family therefore sits in the collection’s top band, beside 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 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 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 this is investment advice, and it is worth remembering that canvas, nylon and seasonal-colour versions discount rather than appreciate.

Which Version to Choose

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. 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 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. Where resale matters, black or neutral calfskin is the buy, and where it does not, buy the colour you really want.

1. Decide hand-carry or shoulder first, because that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
2. Then size: the 10 for occasion carry, the 12 for daily use
3. Then material, bearing in mind that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. And only then consider an original on the secondary market