Summer of 1997 in New York.
It's five in the afternoon and a woman asks a passerby to tell her how to get to her destination, but he robs her at gunpoint, stealing her bag and some shoes.
It wouldn't be a special story for 1990s Manhattan if it weren't for the fact that she's Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker);
her shoes, Manolo Blahnik sandals, and her bag, a model from the Italian firm Fendi.
"It's not a bag.
It's a Baguette!” she replies, shocked by the mugger's ignorance of her.
The scene took place in the third season of
Sex and the City
and, since then, the 10 million viewers that the series amassed for each episode have been clear about the difference between a bag and that Baguette.
In February 2000, Madonna, with a Baguette at the 'Evening Standard' awards.Stefan Rousseau - PA Images
"I think something changed in the accessories industry after that bag," reasons designer Silvia Venturini Fendi, heiress to the Italian house and responsible for Karl Lagerfeld being its creative director between 1965 and his death three years ago.
“At a time when bags were only asked for a functional role, and under certain nonconformity due to the
minimal fever
that the nineties brought, I wanted to create a piece with personality, that had a basic silhouette, but that would give countless games”, he says.
In 1997, pop culture added data such as the coming out of the presenter Ellen DeGeneres, the death of Princess Diana or a music market cornered by the Spice Girls.
But on the catwalks the speech that still prevailed was that of a silent minimalism that celebrated Helmut Lang or Calvin Klein.
"We were an industry surrendered to austerity, and I had already gotten sufficiently exasperated," says Silvia Venturini Fendi about the origin of a bag that intended to shelve those huge backpacks with which women went to a date the same as to the office.
Such was the intention of Fendi that it was baptized in honor of the loaf of bread that French women wear under the bag,
and such was its reception that from then on every piece that was born with the intention of being a star had to be titled as a star bag.
His kind followed one another endlessly: Dior's Gaucho, ductile and curved;
Marc Jacobs' Jessica, in honor of model Jessica Stam.
They all seemed to fuel that recent idyll between Hollywood and fashion houses, and the trickle over which actress wore him on this or that errand around Los Angeles turned into a frenzy.
The series that made him famous took care of elevating him even more when the character of Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) drowns in her own classism when she believes that someone has stolen it from her in the Playboy mansion, having to be expelled by the Hugh Hefner himself.
His kind followed one another endlessly: Dior's Gaucho, ductile and curved;
Marc Jacobs' Jessica, in honor of model Jessica Stam.
They all seemed to fuel that recent idyll between Hollywood and fashion houses, and the trickle over which actress wore him on this or that errand around Los Angeles turned into a frenzy.
The series that made him famous took care of elevating him even more when the character of Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) drowns in her own classism when she believes that someone has stolen it from her in the Playboy mansion, having to be expelled by Hugh Hefner himself. .
His kind followed one another endlessly: Dior's Gaucho, ductile and curved;
Marc Jacobs' Jessica, in honor of model Jessica Stam.
They all seemed to fuel that recent idyll between Hollywood and fashion houses, and the trickle over which actress wore him on this or that errand around Los Angeles turned into a frenzy.
The series that made him famous took care of elevating him even more when the character of Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) drowns in her own classism when she believes that someone has stolen it from her in the Playboy mansion, having to be expelled by Hugh Hefner himself. .
and the drip about which actress was wearing him for this or that errand around Los Angeles turned into a frenzy.
The series that made him famous took care of elevating him even more when the character of Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) drowns in her own classism when she believes that someone has stolen it from her in the Playboy mansion, having to be expelled by Hugh Hefner himself. .
and the drip about which actress was wearing him for this or that errand around Los Angeles turned into a frenzy.
The series that made him famous took care of elevating him even more when the character of Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) drowns in her own classism when she believes that someone has stolen it from her in the Playboy mansion, having to be expelled by Hugh Hefner himself. .
A year after the robbery, Carrie Bradshaw was wearing a bag again.United Archives GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo
“Having that bag during the 2000s was like buying a direct passport to the fashion industry”, reflects voraciously the designer Miguel Becer, creator behind the firm ManéMané.
Interest in this relic has not waned: in 2019, after the official announcement of the
And Just Like That series
, Parker herself redesigned its shapes with applications in purple tones, a score of Italian artisans paid tribute to it with an exhibition in Rome last year and Kim Jones, creative director since September 2020, plays at wrapping it in texture and patterns every season.
"Although it starts with a rectangular silhouette and a handle that allows it to be placed under the shoulder, I like to think of it as a blank canvas with which to choose the story that one wants to tell," says Fendi.
If nostalgia is an emotional issue, this bag is undoubtedly an indelible memory.
Fendi has combined it in all its possibilities.
Here, in the last parade of the firm.
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