The Row Margaux: How the Soft Margaux and the Original Diverge, Spec by Spec
Take the difference between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux to five people and five confident, contradictory answers come back. The confusion is perfectly 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. Below is a specification-led comparison instead of an impression-led one, putting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices side by side line by line. The material here draws on what the brand states on its product pages plus prices observed in the market in 2026, which remain observations rather than an official price list. Any figure that is not reliably documented is flagged as such rather than assumed, as 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 longer version is set out below.
Two Bags Carrying a Name Through a Complicated Year
An unlined-looking tote that takes its structure from leather thickness and panel shaping rather than stiffeners, the original Margaux is the flagship the brand’s handbag reputation was built on. The Soft Margaux arrived as a related but separately specified bag, carrying its own ysl construction details and its own product pages. The original was withdrawn from third-party retailers during 2025, and the brand’s own webstore now presents the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder in its place. Reports of its discontinuation are widespread, but no official confirmation has ever come from the brand, and that difference counts rather than being pedantry when you are setting a price on the secondary market. Practically, this means the Soft Margaux is the version you can buy new, while the original is now 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.
Side by Side on the Spec Sheet
Isolating the features the Soft version adds and checking them one at a time is the cleanest way to see the difference. There are five of them, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it looks from across a street. Protective metal feet keep the base off the ground. An interior toggle closure supplies the closing mechanism the open-top shape otherwise lacks. Belted side gussets make the profile changeable, cinched or released. Adding a zip pocket and card slots turns a deep cavity into an organised interior. The table below sets these out alongside the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.
| Spec | Soft Margaux 10 and 12 | Original Margaux |
|---|---|---|
| Protective metal feet | Present | Not part of the specification |
| Interior toggle closure | Fitted as standard | Not part of the specification |
| Belted side gussets | Present | Not part of the specification |
| Zip pocket | On the 12 | Not specified |
| Card slots | One on the 10 and two on the 12 | Not specified |
| Market price, observed 2026 | $3,650 and $4,350 | Available on resale only |
The Materials and What Lines Them
The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are each specified as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, with cotton herringbone lining in both. That lining choice tells you quite a lot about the brand’s priorities, because a cotton herringbone interior is a textile decision rather than a branding one, and it holds shape without adding the plastic feel of a coated logo jacquard. The Margaux Shoulder 12 takes it further with a 100 percent lambskin lining, which is softer, marks more readily and costs considerably more to work with. Across the wider family the exterior materials include 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. The suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, importantly, perform differently on resale.
Buckles, Fittings and Handles
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, not decorative, because they are what allows the belted gussets to 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 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. For one The Row bag that carries hands-free without a strap, the answer is the Shoulder and not the Soft.
What the Size Numbers Actually Tell You
The number in the name is simply the width of the bag in inches, which 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. At 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, the Soft Margaux 12 keeps the depth and adds two inches of width and two of height, which is why most buyers settle on it for daily use. The Margaux Shoulder 12 measures 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, so despite the 12 in its name it is the widest and shallowest of the three, since 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.
Prices Now, and What Resale Is Doing
In observed 2026 market pricing the Soft Margaux 10 sits at $3,650 and the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350, with the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. Those figures place 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 carried the label into the report’s unicorn tier for the first time. The softer secondary numbers say the same thing — frequent Margaux sales reported 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 puts new Margaux bags in the $5,000 to $9,000 range, a useful sanity check, since anything advertised in the hundreds is almost certainly counterfeit. This is not investment advice, and it is worth remembering that canvas, nylon and seasonal-colour versions discount in place of appreciating.
Which Version to Choose
If what you want is the bag you can actually buy new, with a warranty of availability and the fuller specification, the Soft Margaux is the straightforward answer. 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. Hunt down 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. Whatever the choice, the brand runs no public authenticity coding system whatsoever, so verification comes down to 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.
- Resolve hand-carry or shoulder first, since that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
- Then size: the 10 for occasion carry, the 12 for daily use
- Then material, remembering that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
- And only then weigh an original on the secondary market