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The Row Margaux, Soft vs Original: The Specifications Compared

Put the difference between the Margaux and the Soft Margaux to five people and five confident, contradictory answers come back. The confusion is perfectly 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. This is a specification-led comparison, not an impression-led one, putting measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices 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. Where a figure is not reliably documented, this article says so rather than guessing, because 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 comes next.

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. In 2025 the original disappeared from third-party retailers, and the brand’s own webstore now fronts the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder instead of the original. Reports of its discontinuation are widespread, but no official confirmation has ever come from the brand, and that difference counts rather than being pedantry when you are setting a price on the secondary market. What that means in practice is simple: the 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 changes how much weight the specification differences deserve.

Side by Side on the Spec Sheet

The difference shows most cleanly when the features the Soft version adds are isolated and examined one by one. There are five of them, and together saint laurent shopping tote they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it looks from across a street. Protective metal feet keep the base off the ground. The open-top shape gets a way to shut thanks to an interior toggle closure. Belted side gussets make the profile changeable, cinched or released. Adding a zip pocket and card slots turns a deep cavity into organised storage. The table below sets these out alongside the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

Exterior Materials and Linings

Stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both 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. Exterior materials across the wider family include grained calfskin, saddle calfskin, suede, canvas paired with leather, and nylon, which means 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.

Buckles, Fittings and Handles

Hardware on the Soft Margaux is palladium-plated and finished matte rather than polished, consistent with the rest of the collection. Any Margaux is signed by its pair of adjustable side buckles, and on genuine examples those buckles carry engraving, as do the base feet where feet are fitted. The buckles are functional, not decorative, because they are what allows the belted gussets to change the width of the bag. 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. 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.

Reading the Sizes and the Numbers

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 measures 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, keeping the same depth while gaining two inches of width and two of height, and that 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 despite 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, and a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution has been carried by Selfridges. Retail prices for those two cannot be verified, so take any quoted figure as an asking price rather than a documented one.

What Each One Costs 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. That places the entire family in the collection’s top band, alongside 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 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. A major resale authenticator places new Margaux bags in the $5,000 to $9,000 range, which is 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 Choose

Want the bag you can genuinely purchase new, with a warranty of availability and the fuller specification? The Soft Margaux is the straightforward answer. Pick the 10 for light carrying and the shape at its most sculptural; pick the 12 for a working bag, as the second card slot and the zip pocket only appear at that size. Choose the Margaux Shoulder 12 if the way you carry a bag is under the arm rather than in the hand, because 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 prepared 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; buy whatever colour you like if it does not.

1. Nail down hand-carry or shoulder first, since that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
2. Then size: the 10 for occasion carry, the 12 for daily use
3. Material follows, and remember that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. And only then weigh an original on the secondary market