I have a lot of bags/purses. My fav for a long time was my Emily the Strange one (big, letter carrier type!), which no one seemed to have, so I got a lot of compliments on it and people wanting it. LOL
I have a practical black leather purse, for when I want to look professional. It's nice and small, which is good. I also have a cameo style. And I have one that my ex broke which is red-pcv with a skull and harts on it.... and I think a few more somewhere.
My current fav. is a green canvas over the shoulder one (really popular right now). My roommate has one that is similar, and she's put buttons all over the strap (I do that too, I just don't have the amount of buttons she has, and my buttons are spread out on to my other bags -- actually, I only have one button on now, which says "grrl love"). I get compliments on the bag, although it's pretty plain, semi-military style. Sometimes I call it my punk-dyke bag because the bag style is popular with a lot of lesbians as well as in the punk culture and into the industrial goth culture around here.
My Emily the Strange bag is two years old! But I like Emily the Strange stuff, and it fits my style. It's starting to really wear out now, which sux. I love the bag so much.
The other thing that's starting to get popular here is really ugly bags that are uber large! I can't stand them. They are big, shiny, ugly, and did I mention uber big. I thought that my Emily bag was big -- it's pretty big -- but some people are really beating me out in the big bag competition.
Big bags have pluses and minuses. The plus is that you can stick all kinds of stuff in and more (excellent for shopping with). The minus is that you tend to lose everything, and you tend to stick stuff in there that you don't need and it keeps piling up, so it's like carrying garbage around with you everywhere. Not that I don't already lose stuff in my small bags. Purses have black holes in them -- I swear!
--natalie