De Catarina

Best selection and customer service. Have bought Rimowa, Le SportSac, samsonite, victorinox from them for years. The only place to go for your everyday and travel needs.

This place resembles more of a Moroccan Bazar than a retail store…“pile it high and watch it fly” must be their moto. Took the advice of Tong J. who said they have «quality bags» including Tumi (which they don’t)…he must be a relative handing out star ratings for Unilocal.I told the salesperson what brand I was looking for and she tried to sell me some other garbage with calculator in hand offering me a discount over and above the large SALE sign which greeted me. If you enjoy bartering on the beaches of Mexico, you’ll love this gem or should I say outpost.

I’ve been looking for a well-​structured, leather handbag appropriate for work for more than 2 years.* De Catarina had a ton of selection in a variety of materials, prices, brands, shapes, sizes, and what a visual person appreciates most: store shelves categorized by colour rather than by brand. They aren’t pushy, they are helpful, but it’s obvious the shop is a family-​run business because their associates wear casual clothes to work, switch to Cantonese when speaking among themselves, and use eye-​contact across the room to convey meaning with each other without realizing it makes the customer really self-​conscious as they are being served because they wonder wtf they are saying about them.
Despite this lack of service training, I found a bag close to my platonic vision of what «the» bag would look like for me in terms of size, structure, function, material, and price. One can never have it all, and life is full of compromise… even for a leather bag.
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* I cannot bear the idea of joining the unimaginative zombie herd and carrying yet another cookie-​cutter, boring, saffiano, rectangular or beach-​tote-​shaped bag that 1 000 000 other ladies in town already use. I make exceptions to this, such as a simple Mulberry shoulder bag or Tod’s tote (one can dream). But price –is– an object in my endeavour to find a solid investment product, so it couldn’t possibly cost me 4 – 5 mortgage payments.
Everyone knows it but nobody admits it: LV totes are dirt cheap compared to their other models, so the masses would flock to the shop and pick up the best deal (best deal= largest size with the most LV– patterning for cheapest price). Then Michael Kors wanted a bite out of that pie, thus making a bunch of rainbow saffiano color copycats, and so on and so forth… by the end of the day, everybody is copying everybody and people are carrying the same «unique» bag. :P

Whenever we are looking for a good quality bag, De Catarina is the first place we generally pay a visit. The shop carries handbags, computer bags, briefcase, wallets and other small leather goods. In side the shop, you’ll find quality names such as Tumi, Dooney & Bourke, Francesco Biasia, Perlina and Mandarina Duck.
The owner and staffs are always helpful and knowledgable. Recently, I was looking for a slim, compact computer backpack. I found exactly what I was looking for and purchased it with the help from the owner herself.