money bag$

NEW YORK - A tasseled Gucci Indy bag, in beige and ebony GG logo fabric, for $2,350. A Duomo satchel from Louis Vuitton in a chocolate and bronze checkerboard canvas for $1,330. A small satin and tulle camellia evening bag from Chanel for $3,225.

What began as a crudely fashioned pouch of skin presumably crafted for a cave woman’s convenience has emerged as the 21st century American woman’s most public and pricey consumer craving: the luxury designer handbag. As prices continue their dizzying ascent — even Coach, heretofore one of the more affordable labels, is introducing a $10,000 crocodile number — the passion for purses grows stronger, raising the question: What is going on here?

Like most obsessions, the luxury handbag habit feeds on desire, not logic. So, it’s no matter if, like examples cited above, a bag with a four-figure price tag may be bereft of leather, let alone exotic skins like python and crocodile.

While prices may be breathtaking, “handbags are luxury items that the masses can afford to have — it’s not a car or a boat or a house,” Jill Valentine, a young Chicago banker who was carrying a Furla bag. She estimated she owns about 20 luxury handbags, primarily from Gucci and Louis Vuitton, and usually picks up one or two new bags every season.

“It’s an addiction,” said Dana Thomas, author of “Deluxe: How Luxury Lost its Luster.” “Shall we take Nancy Reagan’s Just Say No to Drugs and make it Just Say No to Handbags?” suggested Thomas. She finds the trend “disturbing but yet not surprising because luxury brands have invested so much in selling the idea” of glamorous accessories. Not to mention thrusting them into the hands of celebrities and other opinion makers.

For example, actress Helen Mirren, a 2007 Academy Award winner for her work in “The Queen,” left the stage with her golden Oscar in one hand and an over-the-top $250,000 diamond-encrusted alligator Cleopatra clutch from designer Lana Marks in the other.

“This would have happened with or without the celebrity endorsement,” said Marshal Cohen, chief analyst of the NPD Group, a leading consumer and retail information provider, which began an accessories-tracking service in May. Calling the handbag craze “an amazing phenomenon,” Cohen estimated that the number of consumers buying luxury handbags, which he defines as beginning at about $400, has doubled in the past five years, going from 6 percent to 13 percent of the population.

“They’re reaching for the handbag as an expression,” he said, “you don’t need to worry about does it fit or not fit.” You’re taking a lot of the emotional baggage — bad pun — out of the handbag.”

But many women must put a lot of sacrifice into affording it. “When I do my presentations, I talk about how women are willing to go without the essentials of life to buy a handbag. It’s that important,” Cohen said.

And for those who can’t afford to buy or who want to sample before they do, there are Web sites that offer luxury bag rentals.

What really matters is the bag as celebrity: it’s got its own name, it’s got a designer label and, if it’s lucky, it’s got the “it” status that launches lengthy retail waiting lists of the lustful.

“First of all, any price of a handbag — and price relative to workmanship and fabrication — is meaningless,” said Stephanie Solomon, vice president for fashion direction at the Bloomingdale’s department store chain. “Lately, those kind of rules have been thrown out the window. Now it has more to do with what’s cool. What bag is the cool girl wearing? What is the new status? And status does not necessarily in this day and age equate with money,” she said, citing the influence of celebrities and fashion magazines.

“It’s phenomenal to me to watch the young girls — I’m talking 15-year-old girls — pining after a Marc Jacobs bag, and these bags are $2,000,” she said. “It’s beyond belief.”

Whitney Ritter, 22, received her first designer bag when she was 17.

“Ever since then I’ve kind of had my eye on designer bags,” said Ritter, who carries a Louis Vuitton tote and craves a Chloe Paddington bag. “A great bag you can carry every day and, if you get tired of it, you can stick it in your closet and chances are you’ll be pulling it back out again a few years down the road.”

As the luxury bag-buoyed bottom lines of manufacturers and retailers attest, designer handbag hunger continues to grow and shows no signs of abating.

“We seem now to be in a race — no matter what the product category — to purchase the most expensive option in that category,” said Larry Compeau, professor of marketing at Clarkson University and executive officer of the Society for Consumer Psychology.

In some ways the luxury handbag is fashion’s version of what economists call a “Giffen good.” Giffen goods, named after the British statistician Robert Giffen, are marketplace mavericks: as their price rises, so too does demand.

Hence, the constant waiting lists of people panting to pay some $5,000 to $10,000 for Hermes’ perennially coveted Birkin bag, not to mention the inevitable lists of potential purchasers cooling their heels for whatever the next “it” bag may be.

Bloomingdale’s Solomon speculates that among the holders of the “it” title this fall will be a classic Chanel bag in quilted turquoise fabric, priced upwards of $2,000. She offered evidence to support her theory: there’s already a waiting list for it and she’s on it.

Handbags are so hot that the 3-year-old luxury bag-rental Web site Bag Borrow or Steal saw a 3,000 percent increase in its base of paid and guest members to more than 250,000 in the past year, according to chief executive Michael Smith.