The gateway to luxury. In a nutshell, this can be the definition of an It Bag. Over the years, many have tried to explain in a few words what it represents for brands, and which function, this particular accessory, has. But it is not an easy task.
A totem
Some years ago, as recalled by French newspaper Le Figaro, Vogue defined the It Bag as “a totem able to announce to everyone that you are the owner of what is most desirable in the world”.
The first ones
In the second half of the nineties, the first It Bags made their appearance on the market, starting to become the gateway to luxury. For example, the Lady Dior and the Fendi Baguette: “At that time the industry was reorganising itself into powerful groups. like LVMH and PPR (now Kering, ed) and brands tried to make themselves accessible to reach new customers – explains to Le Figaro marketing expert Benoit Heilbrunn -. Thus the accessories boom broke out: they were no longer luxury goods, but fashionable products”.
An It Bag for an It Girl
Soon after, fashion magazines covers brought the faces of Kate Moss and the Hilton sisters to the fore. Each carrying her iconic bag. “The rise of the It Bag coincides with that of the It Girl: a star that magnetises photographers’ flashes with its fame – the professor resumes -. The 2000s marked the advent of the celebrity market”. A growing phenomenon that continued until 2009, when Phoebe Philo interrupted the trend by launching her first bag for CELINE. A product with clean and sober lines, defined by Le Figaro as “the anti It Bag par excellence”, able to attract attention to itself thanks to its simplicity. Anti, but still It (Bag). To the point that, since then, the phenomenon has not lost intensity. Indeed, it has strengthened, showing that the It Bag is (perhaps) something more than the gateway to luxury.
Image from fendi.com
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