Luxury Leather Edit The Row Silk Dress

The Row Margaux: How the Soft Margaux and the Original Part Ways, Spec by Spec

Ask five people what the difference is between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux and you will get five confident, contradictory answers. The confusion is entirely 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 rather than an impression-led one, putting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices side by side line by line. The material here rests 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. If a figure is not reliably documented, that is noted here instead of guessed at, because the Margaux is the single most misquoted bag in the label’s catalogue. The short version is that the Soft is not a cheaper or lazier Margaux; it is a more equipped one. The full version is below.

Two Bags, One Name, One Complicated Year

The original Margaux is the flagship the brand built its handbag reputation on, an unlined-looking tote whose structure rests on leather thickness and panel shaping rather than from stiffeners. Related but specified separately, the Soft Margaux arrived 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 lists the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder rather than the original. Widely reported as discontinued, it has never been officially confirmed as such by the brand, and the distinction is not pedantry when you are deciding what to pay on the secondary market. What that means in practice is simple: the the row park tote large 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 shifts how much weight the specification differences deserve.

Side by Side on the Spec Sheet

The clearest way to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and check 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 lift the base away from the ground. The open-top shape acquires a way to shut thanks to an interior toggle closure. Belted side gussets allow the profile to be drawn in or let out. 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.

The Materials and What Lines Them

The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are each given as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, with cotton herringbone lining in both. 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. Further up, the Margaux Shoulder 12 is lined in 100 percent lambskin, softer and more easily marked and considerably more expensive to work with. Across the wider family the exteriors run 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 given for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. The suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, crucially, perform differently on resale.

Hardware and How You Carry It

Hardware on the Soft Margaux is palladium-plated and finished matte rather than polished, consistent 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 rather than decorative, since they are what let the belted gussets change the width of the bag. Both the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 run a 5-inch handle drop, 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. Where the requirement is one The Row bag that goes hands-free without a strap, the Shoulder is the answer, not the Soft.

What the Size Numbers Actually Tell You

The name’s number gives nothing more than the bag’s width in inches, and that makes the 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 refers to the bag’s stated size rather than its maximum external span. A Soft Margaux 15 is in circulation, and a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution has been carried by Selfridges. 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

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. The family therefore sits in the collection’s top band, in company with the India and Agnes top handles and the Marlo totes. The secondary market picture is an unusual one: the Rebag CLAIR 2025 report recorded the Margaux Tote at 107 percent value retention, inside a brand-level figure of 97 percent that lifted 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. New Margaux bags are placed in the $5,000 to $9,000 range by a major resale authenticator, which makes 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 Buy

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. Go for the 10 if you carry little and want the most sculptural version of the shape, and for the 12 if you want a working bag, since the second card slot and the zip pocket exist only at that size. Take the Margaux Shoulder 12 if you carry under the arm rather than in the hand, since its tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for exactly that. Go after the original on resale only when you specifically want the archive version and are content to buy without metal feet, a toggle closure or interior organisation. Whatever you choose, remember there is no public authenticity coding system from the brand at all, which leaves verification 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, and 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, remembering that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. Only after that should an original on the secondary market come into it