“It’s not a bag, it’s a Baguette,” declared Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) in Sex and the City, thus cementing the Baguette’s place in pop culture history.
It is also the very statement inscribed on the inside of each bag from Parker’s capsule Baguette collection that she designed alongside Silvia Venturini Fendi, the very same Silvia Venturini Fendi who conceived the Baguette 25 years ago.
In celebration of the Baguette’s 25th anniversary, Fendi took to the City That Never Sleeps and invited some friends to pay tribute to the bag and all its iterations, including collaborative collections with the aforementioned SJP as well as Kim Jones, Marc Jacobs, Tiffany & Co., and Porter.
The Baguette juxtaposes ends of various spectrums—uptown and downtown, luxury and utility, excess and reality, a moment in history while remaining part of today’s continuum.
Fendi made use of the Baguette’s utility and translated it into a multi-pocketed motif throughout the collection. Besides the bag itself, mini and micro dimensions of the Baguette appeared on shaved mink and glossy leather parkas, silk satin gaiters, and gloves, hats, skirts, and sweaters.
Marc Jacobs drew inspiration from the New York cityscape to create parachute train skirts, balloon-backed broken denim jackets, rustling cellophane opera capes, and fluro recycled fur stoles and hats.
Inspired by touches of “local colour” like glass frontages and workmen’s safety vests seen around the city, injections of fluorescent yellow and silver with a smattering of rhinestones pervaded the capsule collection.
Besides the inscription inside the bag, Sarah Jessica Parker’s capsule collection of Baguettes came in a palette of purple, wasabi, baby pink, and soft blue, all embroidered in degradé sequins with four interchangeable buckles.
Japanese luggage brand Porter, known for their bonded nylon and precision Japanese craftsmanship, bent the Baguette in a masculine way. They also birthed the Bum Baguette, marrying the beauty and luxury of the classic bag with lightness and functionality.
Finally, New York institution Tiffany & Co. reimagined the Baguette in sterling silver, croco, white gold, and diamonds, making it one of the bag’s most precious reincarnations yet. The entirely-stippled sterling silver bag took Tiffany & Co. artisans four months to craft by hand and is engraved with lilies and roses, the national and state flowers of Italy and New York, respectively. The logos of the two brands—F and T— fit together seamlessly in diamond-encrusted, white gold fastenings.
Tiffany & Co.’s iconic shade of blue was present throughout the Fendi clothing palette in various accents and pieces, including a shiny croco jacket. It’s worth noting that the ‘Hand in Hand’ partnership between Fendi and Tiffany & Co. is the first outside of Italy for Fendi.
