The Row Margaux: Soft Margaux vs the Original, Point by Point
Ask five different people how the Margaux and the Soft Margaux differ and you will hear five confident, conflicting 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 shifted sharply in 2025. Below is a specification-led comparison in place of an impression-led one, putting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices side by side line by line. Everything here is drawn from what the brand states on its product pages and from prices observed in the market in 2026, which are observations and 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. In short, the Soft is not a cheaper or lazier Margaux; it is the more equipped of the two. The long 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. The Soft Margaux arrived as a related but separately specified bag, with its own construction details and its own product pages. Over the course of 2025 the original was pulled from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now shows the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder laurentbags.com/tote-bags 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. Anyone comparing the two is really comparing a current product with an archive one, and that changes how the specification differences should be weighted.
The Specifications, Side by Side
The clearest way to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and take 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 reads from across a street. Protective metal feet hold the base away from the ground. An interior toggle closure supplies the closing mechanism the open-top shape otherwise lacks. Belted side gussets allow the profile to be pulled in or let out. A zip pocket and card slots transform a deep cavity into something organised. The table below sets these out alongside the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.
| Specification | Soft Margaux 10 and 12 | Original Margaux |
|---|---|---|
| Protective metal feet | Fitted as standard | Not part of the specification |
| Interior toggle closure | Fitted as standard | Not in the specification |
| Belted side gussets | Fitted | Not in the specification |
| Zip pocket | On the 12 | Not in the specification |
| Card slots | One on the 10 and two on the 12 | Not specified |
| Market price, observed 2026 | $3,650 and $4,350 | Resale only |
The Materials and What Lines Them
The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, and both are lined in cotton herringbone. The lining choice reveals plenty about the brand’s priorities: a cotton herringbone interior is a textile decision, not a branding one, and it holds shape without bringing in 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. 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. Suede and canvas versions read differently in the hand and, importantly, behave differently on resale.
Buckles, Hardware and 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. Purpose rather than decoration is the point of the buckles, as they are what enables the belted gussets to change the bag’s width. 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 trades that arrangement entirely for elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, so it is built 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 name’s number gives nothing more than the bag’s width in inches, and that 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. 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. At 14.75 x 9 x 5 inches, the Margaux Shoulder 12 is the widest and shallowest of the three in spite of 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 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
In observed 2026 market pricing the Soft Margaux 10 is $3,650 and the Soft Margaux 12 is $4,350, while the Margaux Shoulder 12 is $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. Resale tells an unusual story, with the Rebag CLAIR 2025 report placing the Margaux Tote at 107 percent value retention as part of a brand-level 97 percent that put 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. This is not investment advice, and it is worth remembering that canvas, nylon and seasonal-colour versions discount rather than appreciating.
Which One to Buy
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. 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. 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 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. If resale matters, buy black or neutral calfskin, and if it does not, buy whatever colour you like.
- Start with hand-carry or shoulder, because that separates Soft from Shoulder straight away
- Size comes next: the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
- Then choose material, mindful that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
- Only after that should an original on the secondary market come into it