Thread: Foley + Corinna and Pietro Alessandro?

Someone posted an interesting comment over in BagBliss:

Bailey says:

I have a leather purse from Pietro Alessandro that looks exactly like the Foley +Corinna designing. This designer has been around a long time. I have seen many celebrities with the Alessandro bag, that is as familiar as F+C. I think it happens that designers do copy each other. Because I have been on the street and people knew I had an Alessandro bag. They would ask where I bought it. It makes me think who is copying who.

So I searched around and found some of their purses, which look identical to F+C on eBags.com: over 35,000 bags at Great Prices - eBags

Owner Pierre Dabagh started Park Avenue International Handbags in 1982, and introduced the Pietro Alessandro line in 2004, with the fashion conscious consumer in mind. Fine leathers, imported from Italy, are used to craft unique and sophisticated handbags, which are then manufactured in the USA. Designers when creating the bags, use a variety of textures, including python, nubuck, iguana, and croco embossing, as well as fine hardware and crystals also imported from Italy. From the shape, texture, and styling, Pietro Alessandro has created a niche in the edgy, fashionable world of handbags.

Anyone know anything about this brand??

Wait, I'm confused. So who came first? F+C began in 1999, but it doesn't say when the City style handbags were introduced. Pietro began originally in 1982, but the Pietro Alessandro didn't come until 2004.

At any rate, the leather on the Pietro Alessandro bags looks cheap in the pictures. Just because it's Italian doesn't necessarily mean it's good. There's "good" Italian leather and there's "not-so-good" Italian leather. I guess I'd have to see one in person, but I don't know of anywhere that carries them around here.

interesting - they do look really similar, but I really wonder who came out with the design first?