The Return Of An Icon

As Fendi reintroduces its revered Baguette carryall into its Spring/Summer ’19 line-up, a three-part video campaign pays an ode to the house’s cult icon.

- Kames Narayanan

“The Baguette is like bread, indispensable: the minute you start eating it, you can’t stop,” said creative director Silvia Venturini Fendi in explaining the appeal of Fendi’s revered carryall to Grazia Middle East. True to her analogy, since its introduction more than two decades ago, the mini bag fashioned to be tucked under the arm has remained a permanent part of the house’s lineup.

To date, more than 2,000 different versions in seemingly every conceivable combination have lined the maison’s shelves. At Fendi’s Spring/Summer ’19 runway presentation, the cult accessory from the ’00s made its return in new iterations, on which the brand’s “FF” logo sit front and centre.

As an ode to the longstanding icon’s reinstatement into the house’s contemporary lineup of accessories, Fendi has launched a three-episode series, titled #BaguetteFriendsForever. The campaign plays on the acronym BFF (Best Friends Forever) and like its name suggests, expounds on perennial friendships between women — much like the bond an owner forges with her Baguette bag over years of wear.

In a journey from Shanghai to Hong Kong and New York, the video chronicles the pursuit of three different groups of friends —a strong cast of international actors and social media starlets — as they seek out unique quests for the Baguette carryall. At one point, actress Sarah Jessica Parker even makes a cameo.

The real stars of the video, however, are undeniably Fendi’s Baguette bags. Vintage pieces pulled out from the archives presented alongside the season’s debuts, recall the time-worn desirability of the carryall — an appeal that only seems to swell with time.

Here, we chronicle the three-part campaign in a curated photo diary, alongside the introspective of the Baguette’s muses in the three cities featured in the video.