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The original Fendi Bag was small, neat and held little more than a lipstick and mirror. In 1999 Prada brought out the Prada Bowling Bag, sometimes called the Bowler Handbag, at the other end of the scale. This is a bag designed to hold as much as you want to carry around, whether it is simply a copy of Heat magazine or something more intellectual, this handbag was designed to take it.
However for most women this was a bag that taxed the muscles a little too much. But regardless of its size and practicality, the Prada Bowling Bag remains a covetable classic designer handbag.
engraved plaques

It is hard to believe that the tiny Fendi bag - which became known as a baguette - really started the whole handbag mania worldwide, back in 1998. The first bag credited as an It-Bag was the design of Silvia Fendi, this neat bag was supposed to tuck under your arm neatly - a world away from the oversized statement bags that now grace the fashion pages. Now the Fendi Baguette is an acknowledged design icon, and the brand was immortalised in the words of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City “I’m homeless! I’ll be a bag lady. A Fendi bag lady, but a bag lady!”

The designer clutch purse, often with a handle, is just as popular now as on the day it was launched to an innocent public in the pre-IT-bag days. The Fendi Baguette was named because of its resemblance to the shape of the classic French stick.

The house of Fendi has been established for ninety years and its founder was Adele Casagrande. The company started by producing leather goods under her name, and the big change came in 1925 when Adele married Edoardo Fendi. This was the start of the world famous luxury Fendi brand, which was developed further by the couple’s five daughters. Now Fendi is part of the conglomerate made up of Prada, Louis Vuitton, Moet and Hennessey.

The first Fendi bags featured the double F ‘Zucca’ logo, conceived by Karl Lagerfeld, creative director of Fendi, in the 1970s, and they were virtually given away in the beginning. In a shrewd move, the house of Fendi held a sample bag sale for fashion writers, selling the bags at a fraction of the usual price. At the launches of the next European Designer Collections the writers were spotted sporting their bargain Fendi bags. The press loved this and the story gained a momentum of its own. The bag was christened the baguette and only 600 of the originals were ever made. Read more »