Vera Bradley and Greek Life
 

Just out of curiosity, how big is Vera Bradley at your campuses? Is Vera just something indigenous to South, or do those in the North love it too? I know at my college campus, Vera was big across campus, but huge with the Greeks.


If you think I am crazy, and have no idea what I am talking about please check out Vera's website :)

We love Vera here- VB is even sold in our bookstore. :) :) :)

Patricia Miller - Co-Founder of Vera Bradley is a KD. Maybe her other half is Greek as well.

Vera is pretty popular at Maryland too. My first awareness of Vera was actually the other PNMs' bags when I was going through recruitment. They seemed to be everywhere. I like how the patterns have evolved quite a bit.

My friend who is a KD at Tennessee says they give their NMs Vera Bradley bags on bid day. I can't imagine how much that costs for 45ish (I think) NMs.

And an Indiana University alum. Vera Bradley stuff is HUGE at IU.

it's huge at my school too
not as big as Uggs or Northface jackets though.. lol

I saw a girl on campus the other day rocking four Vera Bradley items at once. I was pretty impressed that she managed to carry them all at the same time.

Other than that, never really seen it, and I've never seen any Lily other than my own. North Face is actually useful here with the weather, and well, UGG boots can see me in hell. I know people think they are great but they are just as offensive as Crocs.

I don't see much Vera in Los Angeles.

vera was huge at my undergrad in maryland and pretty popular at home in jersey.

especially among girls in sororities at school, but you would see it everywhere.

now in ireland it is a fun way to spot american students, along with north face jackets :)

Several of the Virginia colleges (I can think of at least 4 off the top of my head) are not only Vera Bradley authorized retailers, but also Vineyard Vines authorized retailers. VV, VB and Lily seem to go hand in hand.

It was a huge Greek thing starting around 2000 or so at Elon, but now everyone and their mother has some Vera. It used to be a sure-fire way to spot a sorority girl.

They sell a limited selection in the bookstore now!

I live in GA so of course it's huge here, as well as Coach (my fave). I think VB bags look like a grandma quilt purse but what do I know... :rolleyes: At least they're cheaper than Coach.

VB is also sold in our bookstore, Delta Chi was colonizing on campus and they had a VB pitch to get all of the sorority buttons on our bags (thats how popular it is)

Wow! I had no idea Vera Bradley was so popular. My grad school is pretty small and not really a VB type of place.

There's always a boutique at Kappa Delta Conventions and the Vera Bradley table is huge; just mountains of the stuff. I'm not sure if it's discontinued items or what.

Those KD NM bags might have been gotten at a pretty nice discount since Patricia Miller has stayed close to her KD roots. I probably works out nicely for the company as far as free publicity goes.

Vera's huge here in western PA...on and off campus. Unfortunately, the campus bookstore sells only yucky knock-offs.

Why is it that knock-offs of other styles look fairly decent, but VB look-alikes are so awful???? Some of the colors and patterns are...um...strange...

its big here in FL too...back in the day, i used to think that vera bradley bags WERE sorority bags since I have never heard of VB and i only saw sorority girls with them. Now i know otherwise and I am obsessed!!:p:p

WOW! Vera Bradley! I just moved from North Carolina to Illinois and I forgot all about those. Now that I think about it, I haven't seen any here. When I was in NC I would see them everywhere I went. I promise there were VB bags EVERYWHERE. Personally, I can't stand them (maybe because my NC experience was overkill) but to each her own. I did an internship in Smithfield, NC and there was an outlet there. The ratio of VB bags to people was just crazy. If I had five bucks for every three I saw, my student loans will be paid in full right now.

I do think it is a regional thing. They are really big in the south and not so much in the northern states in which I have lived or visited recently. Northern women might like them but southern girls have definately cornered the market on them.

Eh. I know a few girls that have them, but not sorority girls necessarily. Personally, I think they're ugly...grandma-type bags.

i know
i, personally, hate vera. and uggs.
they are both hideous
i do own a northface though. and different non-ugg boots! :)

ditto

I go to a school in the SEC and it seems to be the fashion for sorority women. Of course next year there will be a totally different fashion coming in!

My mom hates most of my Vera bags...she calls them my "flower babies" :) She lives in Virginia Beach and Vera is pretty big there
Vera is not as popular out here in the Bay Area. I think the bookstores at Cal Berkeley and Stanford are Vera sellers.

I don't know about the University of the Pacific --they have a huge store that sells Vera a couple of miles up the road

:pi would go gay for vera bradley!

Vera is not big here, at least not with sorority women. The more popular label is Vineyard Vines, especially custom, chapter-specific designs.

Vera Bradley: Sororities
Croakies: Fraternities

I'm a grad student at Ball State and as a non-native Indiana person, for the first few months of school i was convinced Vera Bradley was the state mascot.

It's not just greek students, it's 90% of all females. It looks like her totes threw up on campus. :)

But I found out that VB HQ is just up the road in Fort Wayne, IN so that might have something to do with it.

And I won't knock it, in fact I'm buying a ticket to their warehouse sale in May!! :p

Vera is HUGE down in NORTH CAROLINA! even though i migrated from the midwest i Love love love VERA. JAva Blue is my all time fav

double ditto

They're big in TX. One of my professors even carried a Vera last year, LOL.

For years, only older ladies and "ladies who lunch" had Vera Bradley bags. You used to be only able to buy them at Hallmark stores. They were most often used as tote bags, for example, by visitors on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. When I read here last year that her stuff had become "a craze", it made me giggle. I mean, who buys their purse in a Hallmark store, right?

So yeah, the northeast has had them for a very long time, but only recently have I seen or heard of anyone under 40 using them. I personally cannot imagine ever buying one, bc the stigma of the "ugly hallmark store purses" is ingrained into my mind.

Sorry if this offends, but that's how we saw them years ago.

I'm an old person (over 40) and use Vera's bag to help me stay organized but it suprised the heck out of me when I started seeing all these college (and high school around here) girls carrying VB bags in the last couple of years. My dd won't go near them, probably because she sees it a "mom" purse!

Ditto her ditto. I think Vera Bradley are Fugly.

It's funny to see the different levels of popularity in different pockets of the country. They've been big here for a long time, but were much more exclusive before everybody and their brother carried them. Only small gift retailers or boutiques could get them (hence the Hallmark stores, although here no Hallmark stores carried them it was higher end boutiques). They were all the rage among my Longaberger lady friends back in the late '90's.

I think here they were waning in popularity amongst the collegiate crowd about the time my oldest daughter graduated from HS in 2005, because I only saw a few people carrying them at her orientation. I know more girls probably used the luggage at that time than as a purse. My daughters had a few in high school and they have the duffle bags for luggage, but they told me they are "over" Vera Bradley.

In our area now, when I'm sitting in the carpool line, every middle schooler I see walking down the sidewalk is carrying one, which we all know is the end of any trend. I think it cycled through here earlier than some places.

The only people I know personally who carry Vera Bradley bags are my mom and my mother-in-law, who are 74 and 65, respectively.

'Nuff said.

I think they will hang in there, just that the big trend may have peaked in some areas where they got really huge.

They may end up doing better with other parts of the line that aren't so obviously Vera, and of course, will continue with the old lady and diaper bag markets. I think the luggage also makes a lot of sense for any kind of auto travel.

There are some things about VB that I really like. The fact that they are usually washable is one of them.

It totally depends on where you live. My mom is 65 and she thinks they look like young girls' purses.

Maybe they're more common among younger people in the South and seen as old lady purses in the North. Who knows.

I only have 4, three of which look like the Pierre Deux patterns that have been around forever. I have one Java Blue bag, but it's not my favorite.

But it's like everything that becomes trendy--once everybody's got access to it, the early adapters don't want it anymore. I just thought it was interesting in the difference in levels of popularity depending on where you live.

You may have a point there. My mom and mother-in-law were both born in New York State, and my family also lived in CT for many years.

I'm in the Chicago area and see Vera all over the place, carried by people of all ages.