Why worn-out handbags are the ultimate status symbols, from vintage Gucci, to Dior and Hermès
Jane Birkin’s insouciance with her namesake Hermès bag started it all, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were often seen with bashed-about Birkins in the 2000s
Recently the sight of an editor friend’s vintage Tom Ford for Gucci Horsebit Clutch – in burgundy and looking like it had been swung about many a dance floor, cigarette burns and all – caused a bolt of unadulterated covetousness. It looked both chic and unbearably cool. Like Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen with their bashed-in Birkins in the mid-aughts, cool. Or Jane Birkin’s insouciance with her namesake bag, cool. Or really like any woman who slung a Chloé Paddington circa 2005 across the back of her chair at a restaurant with the right kind of boho-inflected insouciance.
In any case, in a win for anybody who has kept a treasured bag in less than mint – but definitely well-loved – condition a beaten-up bag has become the ultimate status symbol.
For his much anticipated debut at Chanel, Matthieu Blazy sent 2.55 bags down the runway that were, per the show notes, “crashed, crushed and cherished”. He told reporters backstage that he wanted them to look “like they’ve been to a party in Pigalle”.
Bella Hadid, meanwhile, was spied with a deeply patina-ed and slightly crumpled (and rare) Dior Gaucho Saddle bag slung across her arm at Paris Fashion Week last season. The bag was introduced by then creative director John Galliano for his spring/summer 2006 collection for the maison, with the bowling-style silhouette featuring a saddle-shaped flap.
In recently released paparazzi photos from the set of The Devil Wears Prada sequel, Anne Hathaway – returning to her role as Andy Sachs, one-time assistant to the formidable editor-in-chief Miranda Priestly (Meryl Streep) – was snapped carrying a scratched and slightly misshapen vintage Coach satchel. A sign perhaps that she may have moved up in the world, but that she’s remaining true to the person she always was. That is: principled and self-possessed enough to not need the latest season’s bag to show she has style.
