I have quite a few Mulberry bags and the oldest one is around 10 years old. It is an oak Bayswater in the old Darwin leather and it is worn - I have used it loads and have not babied it. It has been my carry-on, weekend bag, bag for Uni with heavy books, shopping bag and I even think my dog has been sitting in it - she most certainly uses it as a pillow if given the chance. It has never been sent to Mulberry to be repaired.
I have newer bags, such as a Lizzie bucket bag, Silky Snake Bayswater, Mini Alexa and they have not been used as much as the oak Bays and I have been good to these bags.
They are looking worn - the coloured bags (green, purple) are losing their colour in some areas. Some of them have been in for repair. The Silky Snake Bays feels like it needs to be sent in for repair soon.
I have a new Antony in Oak Natural leather (I think that's what it's called) and I am not massively impressed with the look of the leather compared to the old Darwin. I've seen some older natural leather Bayswaters around, and they look like crumbled up parchment paper. The leather just isn't nice and loads of the newer leathers are just thin and flimsy.
With regards to the colour coming off the coloured bags, Mulberry can't help. They advise to use some colourless product to nourish the leather, but that doesn't bring back the colour if it has already gone.
The bags are not made to last - I feel like they were years ago. My mum had some of the really old bags and they lasted 15-20 years or so - with two kids not being careful with them.
When talking about expensive, poor quality products, I think it is important to consider the service as the bags will probably have to be sent in for repair.
I find it difficult to say anything nice about it.
The staff dealing with the repair request (over the phone, in the shops) are difficult. Some are good, but it takes so long to get it sorted.
Then the repair itself takes weeks.
Then the bag is sent back to the shop - sometimes it gets lost so they can't find the bag and you end up wasting your time, even have to come back some other time when they've finally found the bag.
Sometimes they can't do the repair properly. I had a really nice bag which I had not used much but it needed to be repaired but they only had some new leather, not the same type and colour as the original bag. The repair went ahead, I used the bag twice before the bit that had been repaired with the new leather looked really awful. I ended up getting my money back for that bag.
I've had several other items replaced because they couldn't repair them - purses with discoloured zips/metal bits, inking going sticky and ruining my clothes and so on.
In the grand scheme of things, Mulberry has gone from being awesome to being disgraceful. Even when going to the shops to have a look, I get annoyed with the lack of service.
Wow, that's long. If it was too long and you didn't read it here's the summary: Mulberry is not worth it, buy something else.