the most coveted bag in the world

This is the story of the Chanel 2.55.

There are It Bags and then there is the Chanel 2.55. This iconic creation may have made its debut dangling from the shoulders of the best-dressed ladies half a century ago, but it is still the most coveted of accessories; the status symbol of choice for women the world over, be they First Ladies, fashion leaders or football WAGs.

The 2.55 has pan-generational appeal. It’s as much a part of the uniform of wealthy older ladies-who-lunch as it is the must-buy first designer bag for young pop stars such as Lily Allen and style setters including Coleen Rooney. Not only is it the most coveted handbag on the planet; it’s also the most widely imitated. Pop into any high-street store and chances are you’ll find a copycat quilted bag with a chain strap. (In fact, a bag with only one of these two characteristics would still owe a debt to the 2.55, as neither had been used on a bag before.)

The pioneering French fashion designer Coco Chanel, who was born in 1883, scored a hit in 1929 with her first elegant shoulder bag. It was inspired – as were so many of her designs – by her own needs. “I got tired of having to carry my bags in my hands and losing them. So I added thin straps, so they could be used as shoulder bags,” she explained.

Chanel borrowed ideas from what men used and wore – and, in the process, simplified and revolutionised women’s lives. She took the straps on soldiers’ satchels and made them finer and more elegant, adding them to slim clutches made of black or navy jersey and lined in red or blue grosgrain. Voila, the lady’s shoulder bag was born.

The original shoulder bag remained in Chanel’s repertoire until the 1950s, when it was reborn, with quilted lambskin, gilt chain and several inside pockets, as the 2.55. The name comes from the date it was created: February 1955. An instant hit in its day, it went on to become a favourite of women such as Jackie Kennedy, Mia Farrow and other style icons of the 1960s. Two decades later it was the accessory of choice for yuppie businesswomen – ­Sigourney Weaver has one in the film Working Girl, in which she plays the bitchy boss – which might explain why it had fallen a little from fashionable favour by the mid-1990s.

However, it is now as lusted-after and imitated as ever, thanks to the Chanel fashion house’s creative director Karl Lagerfeld. He designs new variations each season, and it has appeared in a rainbow’s worth of colours and in fabrics including denim, velvet, raffia and tweed. It’s also been super-sized and miniaturised – but only the original black quilted lambskin version, measuring 16cm x 25.5cm x 7.5cm, bears the name 2.55.

from ithandbag.com