What we do know, though, is that consumer interest in Louis Vuitton, and especially in its monogram bags, has rebounded in a huge way under the leadership of creative director Nicolas Ghesquiere. That’s generally how luxury brands approach inquiries to their stock practices and manufacturing, which are full of tightly guarded secrets. We reached out to Louis Vuitton for comment, but the brand declined to participate in this story. So what’s causing it? The Cause of the Out-Of-Stock Problem? Because introductory-tier bags like the Speedy are affected by Louis Vuitton’s stock issues, as well as many wallets and small leather goods that are generally intended to be sold at high volume, it seems as though Vuitton’s out-of-stock problem is at least partially genuine rather than totally manipulated by LV in order to stoke customer demand.

The Birkin, on the other hand, is the kind of bag whose scarcity moves it to the top of the shopping list for women who have long been buying whatever they want gaining their attention requires different tactics than for those first entering the ranks of luxury shoppers. Its purchase should feel like an event because it’s an individual first, not because the bag itself was difficult to track down. The Speedy isn’t a bag whose scarcity makes sense-it’s positioned as a handbag gateway drug, the type of bag that inures new customers to the idea of being luxury shoppers. I can’t remember that happening any other time in the past decade. For example, right now, two of the four sizes of Vuitton’s most famous bag, the Speedy, are sold out in monogram canvas, both in the traditional and bandouliere models. But lately, Louis Vuitton bags, wallets, and small accessories can feel downright scarce. Barring an It Bag situation or special circumstances (such as the incredible, sustained demand for the Hermès Birkin and Kelly), though, it’s pretty easy to buy even the most popular designer bags from nearly any brand. Louis Vuitton does many things other brands do to shore up a sense of exclusivity around its products, like requiring shoppers to buy directly from the brand and never putting accessories on sale. If your company is that big, you’re going to be satisfying the majority of consumer demand as a matter of course, because the business wouldn’t have grown to that size if it didn’t have manufacturing abilities that outpaced its competitors, which makes true scarcity far less likely than it would be for a smaller brand. To a certain extent, that’s a question of scale: Louis Vuitton has been the biggest luxury brand in the world for all of recent history. In my nearly decade-long career covering luxury brands, I’ve never thought of Louis Vuitton bags as scarce.

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