Nero Valentino: The Birkin Copy

A Birkin bag is not something I’ve ever strived for. I can’t afford to spend so much on a bag and I don’t have the patience to sit on a waiting list for years on end so, for practical reasons, I’ve never desired one. That’s not to say I’m not in love with the design of a Birkin bag. They’re structured, simple, timeless and oh so elegant. To me a Birkin is the perfect “grown up” bag so when I stumbled across an obvious and significantly cheaper rip off I snapped it up immediately.

Admittedly I’d never heard of Nero Valentino until I found this bag and even now I can’t find all that much about them. I wasn’t fussed about not knowing who they were or about the quality of their bags when I purchased this as returning items for a full refund exists.

Now I’m adamant the bag I purchased was pale blue rather than this aquamarine shade. I think this shade is a bit more “me” than a pale blue so I’m not complaining. The hardware is silver which works with the colour of the bag beautifully. It’s a substantial size (I was hoping it would fit my laptop in it but it’s a tad too small), it’s structured and very well made but I have a gripe. Yes me, the picky person has a gripe, shocking isn’t it? My issue is how frigging hard and time consuming it is to actually open the bag.

In order to gain access to your belongings you have to turn the little silver lock, pull the flaps from it before then pulling the 2 strips of material from the silver rectangles holding them in place and even then the battle isn’t over. You then have to fight the straps while pulling the main flap over so you can finally get to your things. It’s almost a 2 person job.

Once you’ve managed to open the bag you have plenty of space to put all the crap we all insist on carting around in. I do prefer bags with a lot of compartments which sadly this does not have but I’ll live. Annoyingly it is one of those bags that will eventually lose its structured shape over time if you constantly throw your entire life into it. That’s an easy thing to get around though, just don’t weigh it down with everything and it’ll be fine.

Although I do get frustrated with how long it takes to open the bag I absolutely love it. A Birkin rip off that doesn’t break the bank is always cool with me. I’m still confused by the aquamarine colour when I swear I bought pale blue but I’ll roll with it. Brighter bags are more fun anyway. Now if I could just find a decent Chanel rip off or better yet, the real deal that only costs £5…

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