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The Row Margaux: Soft Margaux vs the Original, Spec by Spec

Ask five different people how the Margaux and the Soft Margaux differ and you will hear five confident, contradictory answers. 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. What follows is a specification-led comparison rather than an impression-led one: measurements, materials, closures, linings and observed prices, set 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, since 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 comes from 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. The original was withdrawn from third-party retailers during 2025, and the brand’s own webstore now presents the Soft Margaux and the Margaux Shoulder in its place. Widely reported as discontinued, it has never been officially confirmed as such by the brand, and the distinction is not pedantry when you are deciding what to pay the row designer tote bags on the secondary market. In practice, the Soft Margaux is the one you can buy new and the original is now a resale proposition. Anyone comparing the two is therefore comparing a current product against an archive one, which changes how the specification differences should be weighed.

The Spec Sheet, Compared Side by Side

The clearest way to see the difference is to isolate the features the Soft version adds and work through them one at a time. There are five of them, and together they change how the bag behaves in daily use rather than how it looks from across a street. The base is kept off the ground by protective metal feet. An interior toggle closure supplies the closing mechanism the open-top shape otherwise lacks. Belted side gussets make the profile changeable, cinched or released. Adding a zip pocket and card slots turns a deep cavity into organised storage. These are set out in the table with the observed 2026 figures for the versions sold new.

Materials, Inside and Out

Stated as 100 percent calfskin in a matte grained finish, the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 are both lined in cotton herringbone. That lining choice tells you quite a lot about the brand’s priorities, because a cotton herringbone interior is a textile decision rather than a branding one, and it holds shape without adding 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. The brand’s own product pages state Made in Italy for the Soft Margaux 10 and 12 and for the Margaux Shoulder 12. In the hand, suede and canvas versions read differently, and on resale they behave differently too.

Buckles, Fittings and Handles

The Soft Margaux uses palladium-plated hardware, finished matte rather than polished, consistent 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. The buckles are functional rather than decorative, since they are what let the belted gussets change the width of the bag. The Soft Margaux 10 and 12 share a 5-inch handle drop, which is a hand-carry or crook-of-the-elbow figure and not a shoulder one, so both come with a removable shoulder strap to make up for it. The Margaux Shoulder 12 replaces that arrangement entirely with elongated tubular handles and narrowed gusseted side panels, so it 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.

Sizes, and What the Numbers Really Mean

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. At 12 x 9 x 7.5 inches, the Soft Margaux 12 keeps the depth and adds two inches of width and two of height, which is why most buyers settle on it 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. There is a Soft Margaux 15 in circulation, and Selfridges has carried a Margaux 17 in a leather-and-canvas execution. Neither of them has a verifiable retail price, so any figure quoted for them should be treated as an asking price rather than a documented one.

What Each One Costs and What Resale Is Doing

In observed 2026 market pricing the Soft Margaux 10 sits at $3,650 and the Soft Margaux 12 at $4,350, with the Margaux Shoulder 12 at $4,900. The family therefore sits in the collection’s top band, beside the India and Agnes top handles and the Marlo totes. On the secondary market the picture is unusual — the Rebag CLAIR 2025 report put the Margaux Tote at 107 percent value retention, part of a brand-level figure of 97 percent that took the label into the report’s unicorn tier for the first time. Looser secondary figures agree, 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. One major resale authenticator puts new Margaux bags in the $5,000 to $9,000 range, and that is a useful sanity check, because 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 Version Belongs in Your Wardrobe

Want the bag you can really purchase new, with a warranty of availability and the fuller specification? The Soft Margaux is the straightforward answer. Go for the 10 if you carry little and want the shape at its most sculptural, and the 12 if you want a working bag, because the second card slot and the zip pocket only appear at that size. Take the Margaux Shoulder 12 if you carry under the arm rather than in the hand, since its tubular handles and narrowed gussets are built for precisely that. Only pursue the original on resale if the archive version is specifically what you want and you are comfortable going without metal feet, a toggle closure or interior organisation. Whatever you pick, note that the brand runs no public authenticity coding system at all, so verification comes down 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. Resolve hand-carry or shoulder first, since that splits Soft from Shoulder immediately
2. Then settle size, with the 10 for occasion carry and the 12 for daily use
3. Then material, bearing in mind that canvas and seasonal colours discount on resale
4. Consider an original on the secondary market only at that point