Is Kate Spade not considered high-end designer? (& thoughts on other bands)

[Dogsrus99]

As the title says
What about Marc Jacobs? Radley? Ted Baker ?

I think Marc Jacobs has been ruined by the amount of fakes around and the fact that $30 can buy you a bag at outlet in the states etc

I love Kate Spade and it’s as close to designer as I get. I think it’s really good quality, classic styles with subtle branding. I also love Tory Burch bags. Marc Jacobs is a bit Tk maxx and in your face branding for me.

Aspinal London is also high end high street?

IMO Mulberry is lower end designer, not really comparable to brands like LK Bennett and Carvela, despite having a presence in John Lewis stores!

Agree that they are expensive high street brands. Doesn't mean they don't have value though - I have a ted baker and a radley and both are leather, well stitched, nice heavy chains. Same with my Coach bag.
I'd say mulberry is a bit different because it's priced around £800+ rather than £150 - £300, which is the bracket I'd put top end high street in.
But really all that matters is how well it's made and whether you like how it looks.

I think the ones you've listed are more high Street than designer. Especially think of Ted Baker as a high end high street shop and Radley as a label my granny used to like and she was not spendy at all.

I'd also call Mulberry lower end designer and not high street. I really don't like Mulberry bags though.

I like Coach bags and have had some good ones in the past. I am in no position to buy a designer handbag these days, so it doesn't bother me that they aren't designer.

I'd agree. I just bought s Mulberry bag and it was way more than sña Matc Jacobs one (and the other mentioned) but still below LV and Gucci..

Radley does get a lot of hate of here and considered a brand aimed at old women (the implication being that older women have no style) but tbh a lot of their stuff is really nice and if it didn't have a label, (or a dangly dog attached), it could easily be any number of brands.

My granny had fantastic style if youre trying to insinuate that i was using my granny as shoet hand for unstylish.

She was however a proud working class lady and would never have bought a (new) designer bag in principle, even when she got to a point when she probably could have afforded it. She got many a pair of designer shoes from the charity shop as she had v small feet and nobody else wanted them 😁

Anyway, Radley is not designer. But why does it matter to you OP? Or are you just asking out of curiosity?

Shorthand*

On principle*

Kate who? Marc jacobs who the hell is that? Ted baker was mini bottles of perfume with a free makeup bag from boots I thought.
I don’t do brands. It’s just clothes and means absolutely nothing to me.

Well done @Mumtothreegirlies thanks for your input.

@Mumtothreegirlies

Lol, do you just comment on every thread even if you aren't interested?

@NatTheGnat I was asking out of interest. I presumed these to be designer brands imo but it seems not. I also wondered why these brands are often slated/not really thought of as being much. If MNetters are saying that the likes of Dior, Chloe etc are high-end designers then how the hell does anyone afford these ?!

Mulberry is in JL but it's also in Selfridges and TK Maxx I saw for the first time this week.

Mulberry used to be in Harrods but no more. Ted Baker, Kate Spade, MK are brands my dcs would have.
YSL, Gucci, LV, Chanel are examples of high end.

Exactly this. I had cause to work in a few call centres over the past 10 years. So many of the girls had a Marc Jacobs bag in the crook of their arm. It's affordable high street designer.

It’s considered a mid range designer similar to Coach, Ralph Lauren etc… Chanel, Dior would be luxury designer brands. Although the outlet produced bags are on the cheaper end, the clothes are priced starting at £300/400.

Ted Baker and Radley are High Street, Kate Spade is higher end High Street, Marc Jacobs is low end designer.

Did you not know that some people have more money than other people? Really?

I have a Kate Spade bag and a Coach bag. I like them both and would never be able to justify paying for high end designer stuff.

Recently had two people say how much they liked the Kate Spade bag.

The same way as they afford a nice holiday, or a wedding dress, or a Mercedes: they save up, perhaps for years, or they treat themselves when they get a pay rise, or they get a bonus, or they get an inheritance or a small lottery win, or they or their partners just earn quite a lot of money. The top five percent earn a lot of money, and there are millions of them.

Not everyone can afford to pay a couple of thousand pounds for a handbag, but a lot of women can, and of those women enough of them will choose to do so that it's a viable business, and a disproportionate number of them are on the MN S&B board.

sigh
Yes, you I know that. But the average person/shopper doesn't have the money to buy these brands

@Dogsrus99 The whole point of elite brands is that everyone doesn’t have them! Or access to them. The same applies to Rolls Royce! The couture houses want exclusivity. They don’t want everyone to own Chanel. Or Dior. Therefore most do not have access to these bags. So pay what you can afford. There are very well made bags in high street retailers.

I think of higher end high street as the brands you’d see on literal high streets where the clothes were in the £hundreds rather than £tens. LK Bennett, Ted Baker, Reiss, Russell & Bromley, etc. (of course this has changed since covid - but when high streets still had shops!)

I would have put Marc Jacobs (bags) and Kate Spade/Coach as low end designer, but maybe they are high end high street in the US. Perhaps it depends on how the brands choose to market themselves in the U.K.