It looked so neat on TV, and since I'm the type of person who likes to carry as much stuff as I can in as small a purse as I can, this one looked perfect...and I thought, well, it's from Buxton, so it has to be decent.

I opened the package and took the purse out and was very disappointed at how flimsy the purse seemed.  That, and the fact that the front flap closure is magnetized have convinced me that I had made a big mistake.  The issue I have with the magnetized closure  is that I had a purse at one time with a similar closure and it took me a couple of months to figure out why my ATM cards were being ruined.  Even though I kept them in my wallet, just the act of taking them out of my purse past the magnets caused them to become demagnetized.  It was pretty inconvenient, to say the least, which is why I have big concerns about the magnetic closure on this purse.

When I took the purse out of the bag it came in, I didn't notice any odd smells...just the smell of leather.  The bag I bought was the tan one, so I don't know whether or not that made a difference with regards to smell.

It does look much smaller than shown on TV...I wouldn't know because I did not try to put any of my stuff in it.  I'm planning on returning it to the store where I bought it and don't want to take a chance on them saying it had been "used".

Would not recommend or ever buy again.