Handbag Dilemma

This is a dilemma - not a really real one, but a dilemma after all: I have to think about it and cannot just move on, doing other, more interesting and urgent things.

I need a new handbag. For the summer; one, which goes with everything (though not for evenings, bien-sure). It should be at ease with a wardrobe in light grey, white, terracotta, some little blue, a lovely olive green and quite a lot if browns, camel and cinnamon. And a bit of black. And white/grey hair. Green/brown eyes.
So, you see, not easy....

For the last weeks, the dilemma has been getting even bigger: My budget and my ideas do live in different space galaxies. At least on the first and second look. I have done some real soul/wardrobe searching and walked around with my eyes wide open in this city of Brussels. Up to now, very diffcult, not really successful.

What do I need? I need a bag with handles - my beautiful slopping Biedermeier Shoulders do not support a bag which hangs on your shoulder. I look like the hunchback of Notre Dame and get definite pain in my back. I need a bag with handles, like the Queen.
Good models: Birkin Bag and some very nice things done by Celine. I immediatedly refer here to the budget dilemma.

I have the form. Now: Which Colour?

I have had for years and years always a summer bag in a "tan" - going very well with white, browns, terracotta and grey. But I feel, that I have to move on - thinking right now about some grey or beige handbag..... But this could be dangerous, I could look within a minute dowdy and frumpy and just "passée".
Perhaps in Patent leather?  Bearable, but not really for me, and not easy to pull of. And not really a classic for the next years to come up. I am not rich enough to buy several bags in the next years. So, be clever and buy well.

I have the shoes to consider as well. All the magazines tell us this season, that putting shoes and bags together is boring. Last season it was still ok, if I remember my english Vogue right. I still think it makes my life easier and looks pulled together. The only NO-NO: A white bag with white shoes looks defintively like a first communion outfit, so don´t go near this.
And then, who wants to change every day his handbag? I search for one and for all, going through the summer with me..

A red handbag, you will say! I have one, but in a cherry red, which I love, an old model by " Le Tanneur", of the times when they were not yet back on the market, being revamped. A very nice and good structured bag, then very affordable and still much beloved. It will come out in october to see the autumn season again and go with my black coat and boots. No dark red bag for summer for me.

For the last 20 years I have bought and rebought the classic tote bag made by "Longchamp" - great quality there was to be got for a great price.
But in the last  years they have also started to vamp the label up, and out go the structured bags, in comes Kate Moss and the zippers and embellishments, which gives me no desire to possess these bags any more. Also, the quality of the interior has dramatically got worse.

I want a plain, good leather bag, well executed, with preferably a nice interior, affordable, discret, elegant, a bit special all the same and a workhorse to be relied on. I know, this is impossible...

Next week I will be for a day in Paris and will have a close look there. Perhaps I am lucky and some bag simply sits there and waits for me - and I will recognize it the moment I see it. But then, with my genetic ability to always fall instinctively for the most expensive thing in the room, I am doomed from the beginning.
Another problem is still this colour question - greige, beige, grey? Or simply, again good old tan? Dark grey? (Looks good with white, though..) - Any ideas? Any place in Paris to be recommended for the handbagsearcher?

Well. I could also start seriously to save for that Birkin thing, for my 70th birthday. There would be some time still to consider the colour and change my mind. But then, I will have to live for the next ... years out of  my already existing handbag collection. And that is not a nice, not a really elevating thought.

I could go on to bore you with the bags I have collected over the years, why, where and when - make even pictures of them and then ask my readers to vote for the "Existing Bag of 2011". But I will do it only, if you ask me to do.