The Baguette Bag Takes Center Stage At Fendi’s Special Runway Show

In honor of the Fendi Baguette’s 25th anniversary, a runway show was held during New York Fashion Week to celebrate the house’s most iconic bag. Models walked down the catwalk in snuggly fleece jackets with Baguette-shaped pockets, charms featuring the purse motif hung from the waistbands of miniskirts, and even the wintery accessories — like beanies, baseball caps, and gloves — were adorned with Baguette-shaped pockets. (One wonders what can actually fit into the tiny compartment.) The iconic bag silhouette, which can be credited to designer Silvia Venturini Fendi, has been around since 1997 and exploded in popularity in the 2000s when Carrie Bradshaw (played by Sarah Jessica Parker) carried said purse on Sex and the City — you can rewatch the nostalgic scene here.

The accessory was subsequently brought back into the public’s consciousness last year, when Carrie once again toted the shoulder bag for the series’ reboot And Just Like That... Since then, the fervor for this purse has continued to skyrocket (it was one of the most popular purses in 2021), so much so that Kim Jones — Fendi’s artistic director of womenswear — doubled down on the Baguette design in his latest collection. “I didn’t want to do a traditional ‘collection’ for the anniversary. Rather it’s a celebration of a time, of the moment the Baguette became famous. I relate that time to a sense of freedom in excess and fun — both qualities the Baguette possesses,” said Jones in a press release.

With this, Jones had several surprises in store for the fashion industry, too. First, Jones brought the collection to New York City, where guests like Kate Moss, Grace Jones, Naomi Watts, Christy Turlington, and Sarah Jessica Parker herself packed into the Hammerstein Ballroom to catch the new lineup. Moss’ daughter Lila Grace Moss, meanwhile, opened the show in a proud moment for her mom.

In addition, Jones tapped designer Marc Jacobs — who, according to Vogue, Jones refers to as “the King of American Fashion — as a collaborator on the collection. For anyone unaware, the close friends have a strong shared history: Jacobs was the Creative Director at Louis Vuitton from 1997 to 2014 and it was there that he hired Jones to run its menswear division, the latter working at the house from 2011 to 2018. Jacobs’ design influence on Fendi’s upcoming products can be seen throughout the lineup — purses that read “The Baguette” was a play on the designer’s own bags that featured “The Tote Bag,” typeface. Models walked down the runway in oversized fuzzy hats, which seemingly hark back to his Fall/Winter 2012 collection, and wore towering platform boots — a statement footwear Jacobs’ loves for his own eponymous label.

Elsewhere in the collection, you’ll notice a special shade of bright blue in the clothes and accessories. This reflected Jones’ partnership with Tiffany & Co. “... The Tiffany flagship in New York is near the Fendi flagship. They are blue, and Fendi is yellow, so there’s a synergy,” Jones said in the same Vogue article. For the special crossover, the luxury jewelry label injected its recognizable Tiffany blue hue into a jumpsuit, menswear jacket, sunglasses, hats, and, of course, into the fresh Baguette bags.

The crown jewel was a bag made entirely of sterling silver, which Tiffany artisans crafted by hand over four months — the accessory is engraved with lilies and roses (the national flower of Italy and New York State, respectively). For additional touches of shimmer throughout the collection — as Tiffany & Co. does — other purses featured white gold fastenings and encrusted diamonds. At the end of the show, Linda Evangelista, who is the current face of Fendi, glided out in a Tiffany blue opera cape and sported one of the aforementioned bags.

As look after look came down the catwalk, attendees were treated to ready-to-wear creations like parachute train skirts juxtaposed with utilitarian jackets, rustling cellophane opera capes, sequin skirts that swayed with every step, cropped corset tops for a hint of sexiness, and lightweight slips that echoed the delicateness presented in Jones’ Fall/Winter 2022 collection. As if to acknowledge everyone’s obsession with cargo pants, variations of these bottoms appeared one after another in succession.

For the final triumphant ode to the all-powerful Baguette, Parker (alongside Venturini Fendi) designed new iterations of the silhouette in degradé sequins with a palette of purple, wasabi, baby pink, and soft blue. The bags feature four interchangeable buckles to suit the wearer’s mood. To be inscribed inside the capsule bags is Carrie’s historic one-line from Sex and the City: “It’s not a bag, it’s a Baguette.” (The creations will be released in December.)

While you wait for these new pieces, plus the rest of Fendi’s 25th anniversary collection, to debut, check out several of the most memorable runway looks ahead.