A history of the best 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 ritzy clientele there gave him the education he needed to return to Italy and produce his very own line of travel-centric leather goods. The year was 1921 when Guccio finally opened the doors to his boutique on Florence’s Via della Vigna Nuova, selling imported suitcases in addition to goods handcrafted by local artisans. It didn’t take long for customers to latch onto Guccio’s wares, and soon after that, Gucci became 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
A trade embargo placed on Italy during Mussolini’s rule meant that materials – leather in particular were scarce. So, Guccio and his sons Aldo, Vasco, and Rodolfo (all now part of the family business) had to get creative, making wicker, raffia, and wood Gucci signatures in addition to cuoio grasso, an incredibly smooth veal calf leather. (Nearby, 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 textile with a diamond pattern, a precursor to the current double-G monogram.
Around 1947, Gucci made fashion history with its bamboo-handled bag, a structured little purse adorned with a bamboo handle bent by the heat of a flame. By 1953, Ingrid Bergman was carrying a variation in the film Viaggio in Italia, setting off Hollywood’s love affair with Gucci. Reported visitors to Gucci’s Florence shop included then-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 friends 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 monied movers and shakers, Gucci was outfitting and accessorising it all. Over the next two decades, Gucci opened up shops just about everywhere worth being seen. One day, at the Milan outpost, Grace Kelly walked in and got a silk scarf decorated with a feminine floral pattern (dubbed the Flora, which remains a house code to this day); on another, Jackie Kennedy Onassis picked out a hobo bag. The latter was recently reissued 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 years after their debuts. The house’s newest creative director, Sabato De Sarno, has already introduced several bags during his tenure, including crystal-swathed Jackies and patent takes on the Bamboo 1947 top-handle. Here, Vogue brings the stories behind all the best Gucci handbags to shop right now, below.
The Gucci Bamboo 1947
Bamboo and Gucci are as interconnected as the interlocking double Gs in the maison’s monogram. Back in the late 1940s, in the aftermath of World War II, Italy experienced a shortage of leather and thus restrictions on how much could be used in the creation of handbags. And because necessity is the mother of invention, Guccio Gucci ingeniously thought to use a curved bamboo handle (applying heat to the raw material to create a curved U-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 leather goods. The current iteration of the iconic bag, now dubbed the Gucci Bamboo 1947, has changed little since its inception. Wonderfully logo-free, polished but not prissy, the bag comes in medium, small, and mini sizes in a variety of polished leather, canvas monogram, and exotic skins.
The Attache
In 2020, Gucci hosted its Love Parade Los Angeles show – it was a novel 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 reprise of a 1975 hobo-style bag Michele thought was due for a comeback. A crescent-shaped bag with two ends that can be clipped together with a clever G-shaped piece of hardware, the accessory landed in stores a few years later in the fall of 2022. With fabrications of buttery suedes, canvas monogram, and leather, each Attache is festooned with contrast web trim in either Gucci’s red and green hues or a yellow and green. All in all, it’s a purse that sent fans of the brand’s 1970s aesthetic swooning.
The Blondie
In addition to lots of L.O.V.E, Gucci’s Love Parade runway show was filled with accessory goodies. There’s the aforementioned Attache bag but also the Blondie – an understated leather flap bag with a removable strap (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 logo that dates back to a logo filed in a patent by Gucci in 1971 – the interlocking G-motif featured a pair of the letters with one inverted and flipped on its head. The Blondie represented yet another cleverly modern homage payment by Gucci’s then-creative director Alessandro Michele to the historic house. The bag is proof that Blondies do indeed have more fun.
Gucci Horsebit 1955
As the legend goes, glinty horsebit hardware entered Gucci’s fashionable oeuvre in 1953. It was Aldo Gucci – recognising that shoppers liked a side of history with their handbags – who perpetuated the myth that the Gucci family had once been saddle-makers to nobility. Aldo leaned into the equine concept, and under his direction, top-stitching reminiscent of that on saddles adorned handbags; and green and red stripes seen on girth straps became a signature Gucci element, as did the Gucci horsebit. Aldo even went so far as to replace the bellhop – a nod to Guccio’s early job – in the Gucci crest with a knight in armour. Since the horsebit appeared on a handbag in 1955, that elegant hardware has become as recognisable as Chanel’s double Cs. Tom Ford, Alessandra Facchinetti, and Frida Giannini all incorporated the horsebit into their designs, and current Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele has given us the latest iteration. Presented at the house’s cruise 2020 collection, the reprised Gucci Horsebit 1955 bag comes in various shapes (tote, satchel, shoulder bag), all unified by the instantly identifiable double-D rings. After all, there’s no need for a Gucci logo when its signature hardware is present.
The Jackie, 1961
Like the enduring allure of the woman it’s named after, The Jackie is a bag that will never go out of style. In 1961, Gucci introduced a hobo-style bag that caught the eye of Jackie Kennedy, whose husband so famously loved Gucci’s loafer moccasins. It’s said that upon seeing a paparazzi image of Jackie Kennedy with the bag (then called the Fifties Constance), the Gucci family swiftly christened it The Jackie. The classic hobo-shape saw many iterations under Tom Ford and Frida Giannini, but its latest incarnation comes by way of Michele, who in 2021 gave us a spin on The Jackie with a bit more structure, an adjustable strap, and a piston closure. Back in 2014, Giannini made Kate Moss the star of The Jackie Bag campaign; now, Harry Styles is ushering in the bag’s new era.
The Diana
In the late 1990s, one often saw Princess Diana headed to-and-fro with a bamboo-handled Gucci bag. Hers was in putty-coloured suede, and even when it accessorised her biker shorts and sweatshirts on trips to the gym, she made it look divine. As mentioned above, bamboo-handled bags have been a part of the Gucci repertoire since the very beginning, and the style has never really left the house. On Thursday, July 1, 2021 – what would have been Princess Diana’s 60th birthday – Michele gave us The Diana Bag, a bamboo-handled tote much like the version worn by the Princess. On this bag, we get a logo of double Gs facing the same direction (Michele’s remix of the Gucci monogram is one of many celebrated interventions he’s made at the house). Because it wouldn’t be Michele’s without a madcap flourish, he added a neon-coloured elastic strap. The latter is a playful, removable touch that references the elastic bands Gucci uses to help its bamboo keep its shape.
The Marmont
The Marmont is less a single bag than a family of bags with Michele as the patriarch. Not long into his tenure as Gucci’s creative director, Michele gave us the Marmont bags with a chain, crossbody strap as the signature style. They debuted on the 2016 fall runways, capturing everything Michele intended to bottle up and sell in bag form: The untethered bohemian spirit of the ’70s and the hush-hush glamour of the Château Marmont. On the bag, Michele introduced his flipped Gucci logo, festooning a semi-puffed, chevron-style quilted pattern of leather and velvets in gemstone hues. The Marmont collection also includes totes, backpacks, and bucket bags, and sometimes the hardware is studded with pearls. No matter which you choose, you can’t go wrong.
The Dionysus
No bag better encapsulates the Greek chic aesthetic of modern-day Gucci than Michele’s first bag for the brand, The Dionysus. The crossbody bag features a double flap-shape in Gucci’s coated canvas textile, and it’s closed with U-shaped hardware that can be traced back to Gucci’s autumn 2015 ready-to-wear collection. (With The Dionysus, Michele added a new signature piece to the Gucci vocabulary: Yes, we know all about the horsebit, but how about some snakes?) Dionysus is the god of agriculture, wine, and revelry, and – befitting Michele’s more-is-more aesthetic code – the bag that takes his name is decorated with fantastical jungly embroideries, eclectic bolts, and patchworked with the kind of decals you might find on a Girl Scout’s vest. Like a Greek deity, The Dionysus bag is widely worshipped, and has maintained its It-bag status since its introduction.
The New Horsebit Chain
The Gucci Horsebit Chain originally debuted on the autumn/winter 2003 and spring/summer 2004 runways, under the transformative reign of Tom Ford. In 2003, the bags appeared in only black and off-white, allowing the enlarged metal horsebit to take centre stage, however by 2004, Ford had added a number of other renditions to the range – incorporating mixed textures, bold colours, and of course, the double-G logo splashed across its trapezoid shape.
Cut to 2023 and we have seen a renaissance of Noughties style – not only in the low-slung-jeans and chain belts, but also in the designer bags. Marie Blanchet, founder of Mon Vintage, previously told British Vogue that “Tom Ford’s designs are [among] the most sought after in vintage.” It’s clear why the brand has produced a number of successful re-editions. Pair this with the departure of Alessandro Michele in 2022, which left a brief but gaping gap between creative directors, and what better time to re-introduce a bag that recalls Gucci’s iconic archive?
The year the New Horsebit Chain was introduced in padded leather through a campaign featuring model Vittoria Ceretti. The campaign was released just a week before New York Fashion Week, and sure enough, by the time shows kicked off, a number of fashion editors and influencers were pictured donning the bag, signalling to the world that a new It-bag had arrived.
