Fashion Week Handbags: Dior Fall 2012

Have you been following along with the endless rumors about who is or who is not going to be replacing John Galliano at Dior? I have, partly because it’s my job and partly because I love a good, public mess, and it would seem that LVMH is no closer to naming a successor than it was the day it dismissed Galliano over his anti-Semitic verbal attacks against patrons at a Paris café. The latest scuttlebutt is that Raf Simons demanded too large of a salary, and that in a rage, Dior CEO Sidney Toledano signed interim designer Bill Gaytten on for six more seasons.

I don’t know if I believe the particulars of that rumor, but I wouldn’t be shocked if Dior did keep Gaytten around for the foreseeable future. Not only is he less expensive to retain than a “name” designer, but his collections, which critics have derided as too safe and too obviously pretty, are also incredibly wearable. Dior Fall 2012 may not be a conceptual tour de force, but right down to the handbags, I could see wealthy Dior clients wearing basically everything that went down the runway. That’s not always true for collections that are high on concept; after all, Gaytten’s first year at the helm of the brand netted Dior a more than 20% increase in profits, despite the protestations of unimpressed fashion writers the world over. Check out the bags for fall after the jump.