“I didn’t want to do a traditional ‘collection’ for the anniversary,” Kim Jones, Artistic Director of Womenswear at Fendi said. When the anniversary in question, was 25 years of one of the most notable bags of its generation – or as Sarah Jessica Parker proclaimed in Sex and the City: “not a bag, but a Baguette” – the desire to reject the status quo is understandable. “Rather it’s a celebration of a time, of the moment The Baguette became famous,” Jones continues. “A time I relate to a sense of excess and fun – both qualities The Baguette possesses.”
Excess and fun are in abundance in the 25th anniversary year collections which reimagine and pay homage to the iconic item. “I’ve got one word: Fendiroma,” says Marc Jacobs. “It is another land, this Fendiroma…” As well as Japanese luggage brand Porter, New York designer Jacobs was just one of three ‘Big Apple institutions to collaborate with Fendi in crafting a collection to celebrate The Baguette’s quarter century, with Sarah Jessica Parker and Tiffany & Co also paying homage to the bag and the city that proved the genesis of its pop culture ascent. “I’ve also got two words: The Baguette,” adds Jacobs. “It’s a bag – and I am never one to shy away from an iconic bag.”
Silvia Venturini Fendi, Artistic Director of Accessories and Menswear at the house, alongside Jones transposed the utility of The Baguette into a motif across Fendi’s collection, with its iconic dimensions regenerated in mini and micro pockets embellishing everything from ankle socks to cargo skirts. However, juxtaposing the functionality was the unmistakable glamour the item’s become associated with, with lustrous leather, shaved mink, sequins and silk all fabrics of choice.
Marc Jacobs’ collection was of the grandest scale, representing the grit and glamour that coexists in NYC, with rhinestones, silvers, and fluorescent yellows acknowledging the glass buildings and workmen’s vests that colour the city’s streets. Bella Hadid modelled a Tiffany blue-coloured jumpsuit in the collection ‘Fendi at Tiffany’s’, overshadowed perhaps only by a Baguette, made exclusively from strippled Sterling silver by the jeweller. Sarah Jessica Parker, the woman behind Carrie Bradshaw’s line that has defined The Baguette’s cultural standing, crafted a capsule collection alongside Silvia Venturini Fendi, with each of her Baguettes inscribed with the iconic sentence. Finally, Porter’s collection gave The Baguette a masculine slant, with their hard-wearing bonded nylon pairing the exactness of Japanese craftsmanship with The Baguette’s glamour.
Head below now to enter the land of Fendiroma…
