Fashion's Great Handbag Crash

Retail power players reel as consumers tighten their purse strings.

- Phil Wahba

LIKE every gold rush, the handbag boom was bound to bust. After years of clocking double-digit growth earlier in the decade, handbag sales in the U.S. have cooled. The $9.3 billion market grew a mere 2% last year, according to Euromonitor International. (That follows a nearly 1% sales decline in 2015.)