THE F FACTOR

As Fendi celebrates all that New York City has given it, a Baguette-toting Marc Jacobs does a star turn for the house.

- Lynn Yaeger

Give me your bag!” a robber yells to a startled Carrie Bradshaw in season three, episode 17 of Sex and the City. “It’s a Baguette!” Bradshaw cries out, and with that, millions of viewers understood in a flash what their heroine was saying: This wasn’t a mere purse—it was something far more important, far more beloved.

In the words of Silvia Fendi, the Baguette’s redoubtable creator, that truncated, short-handled, often highly embellished envelope has “its own personality and its own identity—it’s a little sexy bag!” Fendi dreamed up this icon a quarter of a century ago, and now the house is pulling out all the stops with a series of tributes that began during New York Fashion Week— because if the Baguette first saw the light of day in Rome, it came of age and had its early triumphs in Manhattan.

Kim Jones, Fendi’s artistic director of womenswear, not only decided to show a special collection in New York—to make things even more exciting, he invited his friend Marc Jacobs, who he refers to reverently as the King of American Fashion, to present a small collection honoring both the Baguette and Fendi itself on that same runway. “Marc is one of my heroes, the reason I am here,” Jones says, and indeed, years ago Jacobs hired Jones to do the menswear at Louis Vuitton.

Fendi is also issuing special Baguettes for the occasion, and the eminent Tiffany & Co. is also getting into the act, offering some stellar interpretations—a sterling edition! A gem-studded version! Even the spiritual godmother of the bag, Sarah Jessica Parker herself, is contributing a Baguette she has helped design.