I bought my first Gucci bag well over a decade ago, closer to fifteen years, I recently passed it on to my fifteen year old niece and her excitement at getting this old canvas and leather little bag reminded me of how excited I was that day I walked into Gucci New Bond Street and purchased the bag. It wasn’t in celebration of anything, but I remember thinking for the longest time before that, how much I wanted a Gucci bag. It was THE designer to own. A medium GG logo chocolate brown leather and canvas, at the time it was my favourite handbag ever and I remember never wanting to let go of it. I used it everyday for almost a year for school, work and play, it cost £190, A LOT of money for a first year student but I was brand new to this overdraft thing and if you’re a student of the early 00’s then you remember that Natwest overdraft. Amen. Fast forward some dozen years later, my most expensive Gucci bag hit cost nearly ten times as much as my first; a black leather hobo, hardly ever used but it was my thirtieth.
Gucci remains one of my favourite handbag brands, it went through that phase of being on the arm of every other person and the GG print left little to be desired at one point, but I am glad to see that in the midst of all the common and crass it has held its own and staged something of a come back; the GG monogrammed print, the vintage floral prints and its good old horse shoe hardware.
I love the understated elegance of it all, its still so ostentatiously Gucci but there is that signature class that has never really gone out of style, even with the monogrammed prints. The house has managed to combine its archives, fused it with a new yet somewhat familiar aesthetic, to bring about something of a resurgence in its marriage of old and new. It takes me back to all those years, walking into the Gucci store to make my first purchase, its a feeling that cannot be bought or neatly packages, it just simply is.