In the latest installment of the ongoing Swiss Handbag Saga, Oprah Winfrey has issued a formal apology to Switzerland for having to apologize on behalf of a store in Zurich for an isolated incident.

"I think that incident in Switzerland was just an incident in Switzerland," Oprah told a red-carpet interviewer at yesterday's LA premiere of her new film, The Butler. "I'm really sorry that it got blown up. I purposefully did not mention the name of the store. I'm sorry that I said it was Switzerland."

Oprah's apology follows allegations that she lied about being denied access to a $38,000 crocodile skin Tom Ford handbag.

The Trois Pommes shop clerk at the center of the scandal told a local newspaper that she was just trying to save Oprah some money by showing her identical bags that were cheaper than the one she wanted to see.

"It is absolutely not true that I declined to show her the bag on racist grounds," the unnamed Italian employee told SonntagsBlick. "I would never say something like that to a customer."

For her part, Oprah is standing by her claim that the clerk's behavior was motivated by skin color.

"Nobody's gonna call me the N-word to my face unless they're a thug on Twitter or Facebook," Oprah told CNN. "It doesn't show up that way. It shows up for me differently: I'm in a store and the person doesn't obviously know that I carry the Black Card, and so they make an assessment based upon the way I look and who I am."

[video via BBC]