A history of the stylish Gucci handbags
In 1897, a man named Guccio Gucci left his native Florence for London, where he worked at the tony Savoy Hotel as a bellboy. Handling the luggage of the snotty clientele there gave him the education he demanded to return to Italy and produce his veritably own line of trip- centric leather goods. The time was 1921 when Guccio eventually opened the doors to his exchange on Florence’s Via della Vigna Nuova, dealing imported wallets in addition to goods handcrafted by original crafters. It did n’t take long for guests to latch onto Guccio’s wares, and soon after that, Gucci came an outright sensation.
The best Gucci handbags to shop now
- The Gucci Bamboo 1947: debuted in the late 1940s
- The Attache: debuted in 2022, a reimagining of a style from the 1970s
- The Blondie: debuted in 2022
- The Gucci Horsebit 1955: debuted in the late 1950s
- The Jackie 1961: debuted in 2021, a reimagining of a style from 1961
- The Diana: debuted in 2022, a reimagining of a style from the 1980s
- The Marmont: debuted in 2016
- The Dionysus: debuted in 2015
- The Soho Disco: debuted in 2012
A trade proscription placed on Italy during Mussolini’s rule meant that accoutrements – leather in particular were scarce. So, Guccio and his sons Aldo, Vasco, and Rodolfo( each now part of the family business) had to get creative, making wicker, raffia, and wood Gucci autographs in addition to cuoio grasso, an incredibly smooth veal shin leather.( hard, the Florentine Salvatore Ferragamo was also making do with what was available with his cork- heel creations.) At around the same time, Gucci also developed a woven hemp cloth with a diamond pattern, a precursor to the current double- G colophon.
Around 1947, Gucci made fashion history with its bamboo- handled bag, a structured little bag adorned with a bamboo handle fraudulent by the heat of a honey. By 1953, Ingrid Bergman was carrying a variation in the film Viaggio in Italia, setting off Hollywood’s love affair with Gucci. Reported callers to Gucci’s Florence shop included also- Princess Elizabeth( before her ascent to the British throne), Eleanor Roosevelt, and Elizabeth Taylor. A stint as an actor meant that Rodolfo would also bring in his own picture- making musketeers like Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, and Sophia Loren.
By the 1950s, when la dolce vita was in full swing in Rome, and Manhattan was a playground for loaded carriers and shakers, Gucci was provisioning and accessorising it all. Over the coming two decades, Gucci opened up shops just about far and wide worth being seen. One day, at the Milan village, Grace Kelly walked by and got a silk scarf decorated with a womanlike flowery pattern( dubbed the Flora, which remains a house law to this day); on another, Jackie Kennedy Onassis picked out a vagrant bag. The ultimate was lately issued by Alessandro Michele, as were the bamboo- handled Diana bag and the Gucci Attache bag. Michele was also responsible for the Dionysus and the Marmont – two bags that have maintained their It bag status times after their debuts. Time will tell what bags( new and old!) will rise to the top- coveted spot once incoming creative director Sabato De Sarno helms the Gucci boat. In the meantime, the stories before all the stylish Gucci handbags to shop right now, below.
Bamboo and Gucci are as connected as the interlocking double Gs in the maison’s colophon. Back in the late 1940s, in the fate of World War II, Italy endured a deficit of leather and therefore restrictions on how important could be used in the creation of handbags. And because necessity is the mama of invention, Guccio Gucci ingeniously allowed to use a twisted bamboo handle( applying heat to the raw material to produce a twistedU-shape) in a patented technology that has stood the test of time. Throughout Gucci’s history, creative directors from Tom Ford to Frida Giannini to Alessandro Michele have all utilised bamboo in the design of ready- to- wear and tear and leather goods. The current replication of the iconic bag, now dubbed the Gucci Bamboo 1947, has changed little since its commencement. Wonderfully totem-free, polished but not prissy, the bag comes in medium, small, and mini sizes in a variety of polished leather, oil colophon, and fantastic skins.
In 2020, Gucci hosted its Love Parade Los Angeles show – it was a new moment(L.A., not Milan! Hollywood Boulevard as a Catwalk!), and a brand new bag walked the runway. But the new bag, the Attache, was actually a duplication of a 1975 vagrant- style bag Michele allowed was due for a comeback. A crescent- shaped bag with two ends that can be cropped together with a clever G- shaped piece of tackle, the accessory landed in stores a many times latterly in the fall of 2022. With fabrications of caloric suedes, oil colophon, and leather, each Attache is festooned with discrepancy web trim in either Gucci’s red and green tinges or a unheroic and green. All by each, it’s a bag that transferred suckers of the brand’s 1970s aesthetic conking .
In addition to lots of L.O.V.E, Gucci’s Love Cortege runway show was filled with appurtenant delicacies. There’s the forenamed Attache bag but also the Blondie – an understated leather delirium bag with a removable swatch( there’s a glinty gold chain, a strip web trim, or a strapless option). There’s little embellishment or bedazzlement save for an eye- catching Gucci totem that dates back to a totem filed in a patent by Gucci in 1971 – the interlocking G- motif featured a brace of the letters with one reversed and flipped on its head. The Blondie represented yet another cleverly ultramodern homage payment by Gucci’s also-creative director Alessandro Michele to the major house. The bag is proof that Blondies do indeed have further fun.
In 2012, Frida Giannini( who succeeded Alessandra Facchinetti as Gucci’s creative director in 2006) introduced the Soho Disco bag line. Included was a camera- style crossbody bag drafted with a pebbled calfskin leather and embossed with the interlocking double- G totem. And like all Gucci bags, the Soho Discos are drafted in Prato, just outside of Florence.