An object lesson in the importance of designer handbags in this year’s Paris prêt-à-porter catwalk shows for Autumn – Winter 2008. Or maybe the designers just have a bondage fetish, who knows? The fact is, designer bags have expanded the earning potential of all the big fashion houses and more than half the models carried designer handbags as they strutted their stuff in Paris (March 2008).

With identical short, black, fringed bobs hiding their eyes and dark plum staining their lips, the 38 Yves Saint Laurent models marched through the bright, white, modernist tent in the Grand Palais to a hyper-techno beat with a precision that matched the impeccable and passionate tailoring of their clothes.


There was just one look for each – “I’ve learnt not to try and show every single thing,” said creative director, Stefano Pilati – and not a single handbag on show. “Everyone knows we do bags, why clutter?”. Coco Chanel once remarked “there is no fashion for the old”.

Lagerfeld transformed classic Chanel items into fresh, young looks. In Paris yesterday, Coco Chanel’s successor at the famous French fashion house, Karl Lagerfeld, seemed intent on proving this was true.

As the singer, Rihanna, 20, and the boho-dressed Olsen twins, Ashley and Mary-Kate, 22, watched from the front row, Lagerfeld offered one of the youngest collections ever to bear the Chanel label.
Models with messy teenage hair, sprinkled with gold, and hardly any make-up, save for a slick of gold shadow on their eyelids, appeared in ripped denim mini-skirts with black, knitted ‘sloppy-joe’ boyfriend cardigans.

They wore clingy, girly sweater-dresses in grey, trimmed with baby-pink, and accessorized with berets with a badge on the front, or tight, clubby dresses in black crochet or black PVC. Even the classic, Chanel ‘cardigan suit’, which opened the show, had drunk from the elixir of youth.

In a creamy, pastel tweed, the jacket had its collar tucked under and featured a deliberate “designer hole” in one elbow, while the mini-skirt was decorated with “customized rips” in the same manner as way teenagers tear open and fray the knees of their jeans so they look “distressed”.

The mood of high spirits and youthful fun was reinforced by the catwalk in the Grand Palais, which encircled a pale cream, specially-made carousel with oversized Chanel quilted bags, strings of pearls, earrings, bottles of scent, logos and shoes replacing the traditional, painted wooden horses.

It was possible, however, to discern the occasional item not designed for the under-25 market. The cardigan suit, for example, also appeared in more conventional form, with a belted jacket and maxi-skirt to the ankle. The length had something to recommend it: It hid most of the curious two-in-one tights which were black from the back and nude, textured or lacy from the front.
There were also well-cut tweed dresses with long, egg-shaped, cardigan-coats, trimmed with Mongolian goat-hair, and one classic, tailored black suit, with white cuffs and collar and a white camellia, the signature Chanel flower, at the neckline. The Paris prêt-à-porter season for next autumn/winter concludes this weekend with the collections of Chloé, Hermès, Nina Ricci, John Galliano, Lanvin and Louis Vuitton.

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It is hard to believe that this 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.

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