Practical and purposeful, as well as one of the more accessible entry points into owning luxury fashion, handbag design is timeless. Until humans evolve to have pouches or grow more arms, the need to have a bag to carry things will always be with us. While much of fashion is concerned with innovation, nowness, and newness, handbags thus present a challenge for designers to create pieces that both function as timeless, practical companions and signifiers of an artful awareness of contemporary aesthetic culture – all while fitting these pieces holistically into the vision of their collection as a whole.
When it comes to menswear, designing accessories presents another set of opportunities and challenges due to the historically (though, of course, not in reality) gendered character of handbags.
Today’s top designers put plenty of fresh and covetable spins on iconic leather bags, as well as innovating in terms of material and structure. At Dior, Kim Jones went cool and classic while adding utilitarian detailing. Sabato De Sarno entered his colorful era at Gucci. Dries van Noten’s final collection saw the designer play with volume for his bags. Prada explored texture, while Louis Vuitton went supersized on its classic trunks.
