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The Row Margaux, Soft vs Original: The Spec Sheets Compared

Ask five different people how the Margaux and the Soft Margaux differ and you will hear five confident, mutually exclusive 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. What follows is specification-led rather than impression-led — measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices, ranged 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. Any figure that is not reliably documented is flagged as such rather than invented, as 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 longer version is set out below.

Two Bags Carrying a Name Through a Complicated Year

The original Margaux is the flagship on which the brand built its handbag reputation, an unlined-looking tote that takes its structure from leather thickness and panel shaping rather than stiffeners. The Soft Margaux saint laurent arrived as a related but separately specified bag, with its own construction details and its own product pages. During 2025 the original was withdrawn from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now lists the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder rather than the original. Its discontinuation has been widely reported, but it has never been officially confirmed by the brand, and that distinction is not pedantry when you are deciding what to pay on the secondary market. In practice this means the Soft Margaux is the version available new, while the original has become a resale proposition. Comparing the two therefore means setting a current product against an archive one, which alters how much weight the specification differences deserve.

Two Spec Sheets, Side by Side

The simplest way to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and check them one at a time. 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. The base is kept off the ground by protective metal feet. An interior toggle closure supplies the closing mechanism the open-top shape otherwise lacks. 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 below sets these out alongside the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

Exterior Materials and Linings

The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both listed as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, and both are lined in cotton herringbone. A lot 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 extend to grained calfskin, saddle calfskin, suede, canvas paired with leather, and nylon, so a Margaux is not automatically a smooth-leather bag. Made in Italy is stated on the brand’s own product pages for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. The suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, critically, perform differently on resale.

The Hardware, the Buckles and the Handles

On the Soft Margaux the hardware is palladium-plated, matte rather than polished in finish, matching the rest of the collection. Any Margaux is identified by its pair of adjustable side buckles, and on genuine examples those buckles carry engraving, as do the base feet where feet are fitted. Those buckles do real work rather than decoration: they are what lets the belted gussets change the width of the bag. A 5-inch handle drop is common to the Soft Margaux 10 and 12, which puts it in hand-carry or crook-of-the-elbow territory rather than shoulder territory, and both include a removable shoulder strap to cover the difference. Elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels replace the arrangement entirely on the Margaux Shoulder 12, which 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.

Sizes and What the Numbers Mean

The number in the name is just the width of the bag in inches, which makes this family easier to read than most. The Soft Margaux 10 measures 10 x 7 x 7.5 inches, a genuinely compact bag with unusual depth for its footprint. The Soft Margaux 12 measures 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, holding the same depth while adding two inches of width and two of height, and it is the size most buyers settle 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 records 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. 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

Observed 2026 market pricing places the Soft Margaux 10 at $3,650, the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350 and the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. Those figures set 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 took 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 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. 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

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. Take the 10 if you carry little and want the shape at its most sculptural, and the 12 if you want a working bag, because the second card slot and the zip pocket only appear at that size. The Margaux Shoulder 12 is the pick if your carry is under the arm rather than in the hand, because tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for exactly that. Track 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 you pick, note that the brand runs no public authenticity coding system at all, 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. Start with hand-carry or shoulder, because that separates Soft from Shoulder straight away
2. Then fix size, with the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
3. Then material, remembering that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. And only then consider an original on the secondary market