Are These the Five Most Iconic Bags of All Time?

Hermès Birkin

It started on an Air France flight in 1984 from Paris to London, when history’s forever ingénue, Jane Birkin, carrying an overstuffed wicker basket, spilled her belongings midair and vented to her seatmate, Hermès CEO Jean-Louis Dumas. By the time they touched down, Dumas, a lifelong sketcher, had drawn the blueprint for a new kind of carryall. Since its debut, the Birkin has proved as elusive as it is exclusive. You can’t just walk in and buy one at an Hermès boutique; ownership is all about relationships, timing, and luck. As the Birkin has evolved, it has become iconic in a way that crosses all societal boundaries (though you still have to be wickedly wealthy): rappers name-dropping it in lyrics, hedge fund managers (so-called Birkin Bros) touting them an alternative investments, even Martha Stewart carrying the bag to court during her insider-trading trial. But one thing remains certain: Somewhere out there, someone is always willing to wait. “When I’m dead,” Jane Birkin once mused, “they’ll possibly only talk about the bag.” This year’s headlines certainly did: At Sotheby’s, Jane Birkin’s original namesake accessory was auctioned for more than $10 million, making it the most expensive handbag ever sold.

Louis Vuitton Speedy

Launched in 1930 as the Express, the Speedy was Louis Vuitton’s love letter to city life. But it was Audrey Hepburn, requesting a downsized version in 1965, who turned the duffle-esque accessory into an icon. In the decades since, the Speedy would shape-shift with the zeitgeist. During Marc Jacobs’s reign, Takashi Murakami’s kaleidoscopic monogram and colorful cherries redefined it for the early 2000s, while Stephen
Sprouse’s graffiti-scrawled versions brought an injection of downtown cred to the French maison. A $1 million, a pavé-diamond iteration in a look-at-me yellow, from the mind of Pharrell Williams—and made famous by man
bag king Jacob Elordi—is just the latest update on this haute functional icon. “I didn’t design it to be expensive, ”Pharrell said. “I designed it to be priceless.”

Fendi Baguette

In 1997, Silvia Venturini Fendi reinvented the shoulder bag after watching chic Parisians stroll effortlessly with loaves of bread under their arms. Voila! The carbohydrate-free Baguette was born. Unlike the oversized totes popular at the time, the Baguette, with its petite oblong silhouette, could be worn comfortably over the shoulder. The bag was well-liked by fashion insiders upon release, but it was Sarah Jessica Parker’s Carrie Bradshaw who brought it international recognition in 2000, after an episode of Sex and the City showed her being mugged at gunpoint in SoHo. The thief demanded that she give him her bag. “It’s not a bag,” she replied about her sparkling purple-sequined Fendi. “It’s a Baguette.” Since then, Fendi has sold more than one million Baguettes in thousands of styles—think curly sheepskin, solid sterling silver, and even a fragrance-infused version whose scent lasts for at least three years—but it’s never gone stale (see what we did there?). 

Chanel Classic Flap

In 1982, Karl Lagerfeld stepped into the role of artistic director at Chanel with a mission: to revive a maison steeped in myth but, in the public eye, barely breathing. The Kaiser had plenty of house codes to play with, so instead of inventing something new, he reinterpreted something sacred. And by sacred we mean Coco Chanel’s revolutionary 2.55 bag. Lagerfeld added a major dopamine rush: a gold CC turn lock (arguably the most recognizable hardware in fashion history), a leather-threaded chain, and unapologetically conspicuous branding. The result? A power bag that manages to whisper Parisian chic while screaming status. This paradox of haute heritage that is consistently modern has been remixed season after season. Whether the bag is done up in caviar leather or transparent plastic, covered in diamanté or Lucite crystals, the underlying DNA has stayed the same: lipstick pocket, love-letter zip, double-flap closure, and made by hand in Chanel’s Parisian ateliers. 

Gucci Jackie

Few accessories are as synonymous with one woman as Gucci’s Jackie bag, named after none other than the former first lady, Skorpios queen, and Manhattan editor, Jackie Kennedy Onassis. It is claimed that in 1964, Jackie O, shopping incognito in a Gucci boutique in Florence, walked out with six of them. The crescent-shaped hobo became her unofficial shield from paparazzo Ron Galella’s relentless flashbulbs and, later, a symbol of effortless jet-set style. In 2020, Gucci’s then creative director, Alessandro Michele—pulling from his personal archive—revived it as the Jackie 1961, shrinking it down, adding straps, and focusing on the signature piston closure. Oh, and of course handing it to Harry Styles, who has single-handedly made the shoulder bag into a non-binary hero. The low-key luxury staple has (discreetly) ruled the style scene everywhere, from ’70s Capri beach clubs to Gen Z TikTok feeds. It’s a wear-with-anything accessory as eternal as Jackie O’s oversized sunglasses.