The Perfect Ladies Leather Purse

Just for clarification, this article not about perfect ladies, but about, my friend, the perfect ladies leather purse. Now you could go pretty long with this, getting into a debate about various types of bags likes Clutches, Messenger Bags, Shoulder Bags, Totes or even the popular across the body bags, but we will save that for another discussion. What I’m visualizing for our discussion today is your general everyday, take it to work, carry my stuff in purse. My grandma called it her pocketbook which always seemed funny to me because you don’t read it.  Anyway, it is what it is — simply, a ladies leather purse.  This particular accessory is what we ladies carry all our necessities in from little items like lipstick and bandages to big stuff like our wallet and smart phone. To suit the daily needs of women in 2011, it seems to me that there are certain features that make a purse more convenient for me to use.  For the sake of this discussion, I would like to cover a few specifics which I believe are the main factors impacting the usefulness of my handbags.

The Ladies Leather Purse

Which brings me to my first factor, material.  Though other materials are beneficial in some circumstances, only leather purse stands the test of time.  My grandma had one, I have several and I’m sure they will continue to be around for generations.  You can get into some really nice patterns going with a good canvas, but now we are getting into fashion accessories — we are talking function here and leather just plain lasts. Keep in mind that I’m not saying the the picture to the left is representative of the perfect ladies purse — it’s just an example, which happens to be pretty cute and pretty close to what I might look for in a purse.

Features of a good Ladies Leather Purse

• Does not Stain easily like canvas
• Does not Tear Easily like vinyl
• Is much more resistant to water than canvas
• Is much more durable all around
• Its Shiny

The Right Handle for the Perfect Ladies Leather Purse

The next feature I look for in ladies leather bags is what I call carry-ability.  You see, the handles on the purse pictured above are just a little too short for me. They are great if you are only carrying it around like a clutch, but as soon as you get your arms full, you want to be able to put that baby up on your shoulder.  Normally if you think of a shoulder bag, you visualize a purse with a long single strap which allows you to put the purse on your shoulder and allow it to hang down on the same side.  That’s fine if you prefer that style, but then you kind of lose the ease of carrying it like a clutch.

What you need are TWO straps that are short enough to allow you to carry it like a clutch, but long enough to slip up over your shoulder and tuck under your arm.  This frees your hands to do things like carry coffee, keys or children.  If the straps are wide enough they are less likely to slip down off your shoulder, but if they do, length becomes important again.  With shorter straps, you can just keep going along with your purse dangling on your forearm.  Awkward but effective — the long handled shoulder bag, however, would be dragging along the ground, especially if you happen to be five feet tall like me.

Purse Functionality

So we’ve covered durability and carry ability which leaves us with the discussion of usability.  The perfect ladies purse has to be functional.   I don’t go for the oversized bag motif that you see some ladies carrying around.  You know the ones that are big enough to carry your lunch to work in?  Not for me thank you — remember, we are talking about a fairly standard purse here.  It does however need to be able to hold my wallet.  In a perfect world, the wallet is purchased with the purse and is sized to fit.

Nevertheless, it needs to be easy to get in and out of the purse which means that our ideal purse needs to have a large opening.  I won’t go into detail on the closure except to say that whether its a zipper, snap, magnet or whatever, it needs to be easily opened with one hand.  I also don’t think that flip over ‘flap’ closures should have pockets in them.  If they do, they should only be used for light, small items like tissues.

Finally, I prefer a purse with at least two compartments and a small side pocket or two with zippers.  Since I fancy myself an organized person, I like to arrange my stuff for easy access.  I must confess to some irritation when standing behind another woman at the store who is scrounging through her twelve gallon tote looking for change all the while saying things like, “Oh there’s my debit card.”  Some handbags even have small pockets for phones and a hook for your keys.  I’m not really a fan of the keys on the hook thing, but I will protect my phone by using a built in pocket — if it fits.  When considering a leather bag that has a phone pocket, I would recommend making sure you phone not only fits, but that it will stay in securely while still being easy to get out.

So that’s it.  I’m sure you may have opinions of your own on this subject, but I hope I’ve given you a couple of things to talk about.  It’s important to know what features are important to YOU so that the next time you go shopping for your perfect ladies leather purse, you come home with a winner that you will be happy with for years to come.