Story | Connie Li Photography | Fendi
Inspired by how French women carry a loaf of bread under their arm, Fendi created a small, streamlined bag on a short strap in 1977. Not everyone at the house was a fan, but Silvia Fendi kept on advocating for her vision. Her efforts made the release of the Baguette bag in 1997.
To mark the 25th anniversary of the iconic Baguette, Kim Jones, Fendi’s artistic director for womenswear, says he didn’t want to have a “traditional collection” to mark the occasion.
“Rather, it’s a celebration of a time, of the moment the Baguette became famous,” he says. “I relate that time to a sense of freedom in excess and fun—both qualities the Baguette possesses.”
For the collection, the Baguette is realized in a multiplicity of ways, both in terms of clothing and accessories. The essential utility of the bag becomes a multi-pocketed motif, migrating throughout the collection. The unmistakable Baguette dimensions made mini and micro pockets, appearing on parkas to gaiters and roving all over the body, covering gloves, hats, skirts, sweaters and, of course, the bag itself.
In both contrast and cohesion, a sense of hyper-luxe and glossy glamour pervades the collection, for the Baguette is not entirely utilitarian. Those gaiters are made from silk satin, that parka shaved mink or glossy leather. A stratification of sequins and bias cut silks are layered beneath, adding a shimmer of art deco allure.
“It’s not a bag, it’s a Baguette,” declares Sarah Jessica Parker of Sex and the City fame and the pop apotheosis of the Baguette. In this rough-cut romance between uptown and downtown New York—luxury and utility, excess and reality—the Baguette and the clothing and accessories it inspires are at once defined as a moment in history and part of a continuum.
