Where in the World Do the Most Popular Designer Bags Cost the Least? We Found Out.

A love of high-end fashion and a love of international travel often overlap. Both require considerable expendable income and aesthetic curiosity, and both fashion and travel have a sense of glamor to them, which compounds on itself when the two are combined. After all, what feels better than someone asking where you got your bag and you getting to say, “Oh, this old thing? Paris.” That’s not the only advantage of shopping while traveling internationally, though: it can save you a lot of money, especially if you live in the US and are headed to Western Europe.

The same designer bag almost always costs a significantly different price depending on which currency you’re using, and although an increasingly global luxury market has lead to brands trying to bring their cross-market prices into closer alignment, there are still some big gaps. In order to find out where you can get the best deal, we tracked down local prices for a half dozen of the world’s most popular bags in the world’s biggest luxury markets in North America, Europe, Asia and Oceania. Whenever available, we found the prices in local currency on brands’ websites and then converted them to US dollars for the most accurate comparison; for some of the brands whose websites don’t offer full international prices, we found prices in USD at third-party retailers for bags available to ship to our markets.

Beyond just currency fluctuations and the vagaries of global MSRPs, there’s also the Value-Added Tax, commonly referred to as the VAT, when shopping on vacation in Europe. If you do your paperwork correctly at both your point of purchase and departure airport in both continental Europe and Great Britain, you’ll be refunded anywhere from 5% to 25% of your purchase price on luxury goods of all sorts. In the UK, the refund amount is 20% and in France it’s 12%, both of which are an enormous discount off the already below-US prices that current exchange rates provide, especially for bags that rarely, if ever go on sale. If you’re traveling to Western Europe from anywhere in the rest of the world, you should consider stocking your closet.

Right now, recent British political uncertainties over the Brexit vote have significantly weakened the British pound, which makes the UK a better deal for vacationing US shoppers than usual. When it comes to European bag designers, though, France (and other eurozone Western European countries–MSRPs are usually the same throughout) is still the best place to buy. Check out our full results below.

Chanel Classic Flap Bag – Medium
Lowest Price: $4,473USD in China

Buy for $4,900 in the US via Chanel

Hermès Birkin
Lowest Price: $7,868USD in France

$10,900 retail in the US; bidding via Heritage Auctions starts at $7,500

Louis Vuitton Speedy 30 – Monogram Canvas
Lowest Price: $854USD in France

$970 in the US via Louis Vuitton

Givenchy Antigona Bag – Medium
Lowest Price: $1,900USD in France

Buy for $2,435 via Net-a-Porter in the US

Gucci Supreme GG Dionysus Bag
Lowest Price: $1,747USD in the UK

$2,250 in the US via Gucci

Saint Laurent Sac de Jour – Small
Lowest Price: $2,456USD in Australia

$2,890 in the US via Net-a-Porter