Original Jelly Kelly Handbags

Jelly handbags are a recent craze in designer handbags. Jelly handbags refer to translucent rubber satchel or rubber sack - nicknamed the Jelly Kelly. These rubber replicas of the original Hermes Kelly bag has been lugged around New York by Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker and supermodel types like Naomi Campbell.

The Jelly Kelly moniker was taken from the original Kelly bag - named after Princess Grace Kelly of Monaco, when in 1956 she appeared on the cover of Life Magazine using the famous Hermes Birkin handbag to cover her pregnant stomach. Princess Grace sparked a six-month waiting list to get this style of bag and inspired Hermes to rename the handbag after her.

Jelly Kelly originated in Italy. These purses are made out of waterproof rubber, but the tote is designed to resemble the original version of the Hermes Kelly bag.

Currently these plastic Hermes Kelly bags, nicknamed Jelly Kellys, are practically as hard to get as the genuine article. The Jelly Kelly bag was imported to the United States by a designer named Steven Stolman, who caught sight of the rubber satchels in Italy and decided he could make a decent buck marketing them to high-end retailers in North America. However, Stolman's stroke of genius was shut down shortly after their arrival in the U.S. by a cease-and-desist order from the Hermes Birkin Company, the originator of the Kelly bag that the Jelly Kelly design is based upon. But instead of putting the kibosh on the Jelly Kelly, Hermes' court order only created more of a buzz around this poor-girl's Hermes bag. Jelly Kellys are now plentiful on internet auction sites like eBay.

In the meantime, Hermes swears to take action against anything remotely similar in design to their Kelly bag, policing internet auction sites for any rubber plastic versions that even slightly resemble the Hermes Kelly creation.