it bags

Photographed by Jackie Nickerson, Vogue, July 2018Hardware can make or break a handbag. Overly shiny or the wrong shade of gold or silver metals can steer the accessory in a cheap-looking direction. On the other hand, the best chain bags…

Gone are the days when a handbag’s desirability was purely determined by its logo or shape (i.e. the Fendi baguette, the Dior saddle, the Chanel 2.55, or the Balenciaga motorcycle bag). While these bags will forever maintain their allure,…

In Vogue’s fabulously informative video, Everything You Need to Know About the It Bag, international editor at large Hamish Bowles schools us on, well, everything you could possibly want to know about the history of a handful of now-iconic…

Around that time, “When your own initials are enough” became Bottega Veneta’s slogan, hinting at the luxury brand’s if you know, you know ethos. (This was not a place for monogram canvas fabrications and logomania.) And because it wouldn’t…

Who could have predicted that this design, scattered over the surfaces of countless, seemingly endless handbags, totes, and trunks, would become as instantly recognizable as, say, Chanel no. 5, Coca Cola, and Mickey Mouse? Adored by…

“It was a new fresh thing, but it looked like an old, good, friendly thing,” Nicolas Ghesquière once said, attempting to describe Balenciaga’s biker bag. Ghesquière, the former creative director Balenciaga, was right: this iconic accessory,…

Just about a year into his appointment, Anderson added a significant handbag to the Loewe repertoire, one that gave the skills of the label’s craftspeople an especially fine showcase. Enter the Puzzle bag, which was first seen at the men’s…

But the cult of Dior handbags as we know it now—the Lady Bag, the Saddle Bag, the Book Tote—should really be traced to Marc Bohan, the second designer to take the helm of the fashion house following Monsieur Dior’s untimely death from a…

“Back then, I didn’t really like anything I saw. It all just looked so old and bourgeois and boring. I just wanted to search for the absolute opposite of what was already out there,” Miuccia Prada once declared, explaining how she came to…

At the maison’s spring 2009 collection, Venturini Fendi introduced the Peekaboo bag, which she deemed “the only occasion in which a woman would be recommended to walk around with an unfastened and unlocked bag.” The Peekaboo was designed…