What separates a genuine It Bag from a merely popular purse is not price and not even beauty—it is a repeatable formula. Look across fashion history, from the Hermès Kelly to the Fendi Baguette, and the same four components appear every time: a design that stands alone in silhouette, an association with a famous face or cultural moment, media amplification, and a story the buyer wants to inhabit. That is my argument, but it is also what the historical record keeps showing. Once you see the pattern, you cannot unsee it.
The 'It Bag' Phenomenon: An Introduction
The term itself is younger than the objects it describes. As Wikipedia's encyclopedia entry on the phenomenon records, an it bag is a high-priced designer handbag that becomes a popular best-seller, and the label was coined in the 1990s alongside the explosive growth of the handbag market. In that era, designers competed to produce a single, easily recognisable design which—cleverly marketed, endorsed by the fashion press, or seen on a celebrity—would become that season's must-have.
But the ingredients predate the name by decades. One of the first designers credited with creating the concept of the easily identifiable "status bag" was Giuliana Camerino, founder in 1945 of the Venetian house Roberta di Camerino. Her bags were instantly recognisable through artisan-made hardware and her distinctive use of fabrics formerly reserved for clothing—innovations that included 1946 bags patterned with a trellis of R's, woven-leather bags in 1957, and a 1964 handbag with a unique articulated frame later taken up by Prada. Meanwhile, Hermès, Chanel and Louis Vuitton had created handbags famous in their own right well before the concept took hold. The pattern—distinctive design plus a famous name—was already running before anyone gave it a title.
The It Bag Formula: A Framework for Iconic Status
Here is the framework I want collectors and fashion historians to actually use. Read any handbag's history through these four components, and you can diagnose whether it has—or could achieve—genuine It Bag status. The first determinant, as Amy de Klerk writes at Harper's BAZAAR, "seems indisputable": the bag must be an innovative design. "It can't be too similar to anything that has come before it, and it has to make its own unique statement."
| Component | What it requires | Historical evidence of it working |
|---|---|---|
| Innovative / Recognizable Design | A silhouette that stands on its own and makes a unique statement; nothing too similar to what came before. | Chanel's quilted 2.55, Balenciaga's City, Dior's Saddle, and Fendi's Baguette each stand alone in silhouette. |
| Cultural Association | Connection to a public figure or cultural moment, to the point of being renamed after them. | Bags renamed after Princess Diana, Jane Birkin, Grace Kelly, and Jackie Kennedy Onassis; the Kelly itself renamed in 1956. |
| Media Amplification | Visibility through the press and, more recently, social platforms that accelerate recognition to millions. | The 1990s fashion press machine; Sex and the City-era exposure for the Fendi Baguette. |
| Psychological Appeal | The desire to buy into a narrative—the story, association, and feeling the bag evokes rather than its material utility. | The resale market's own framing: an It bag is "the luxury bag that everyone desires." |
Two of the components deserve emphasis because they are the ones casual observers miss. Cultural association is not mere celebrity endorsement—it is fusion. As de Klerk's reporting notes, some of the most indisputable It Bags reached their level of popularity only by becoming synonymous with—and renamed after—the women who carried them. And psychological appeal is what turns a hit into a legend. "Culture defines and dictates the It bag of the moment," Rachel Glicksberg of resale platform The RealReal told Harper's BAZAAR. The bag is a vessel for a story; the buyer purchases the story as much as the leather.
One more condition sits above all four: the bag must create a moment, an actual hit. Great design means nothing if the bag doesn't become popular. An It Bag, as a Vestiaire Collective spokesperson put it, is "so famous because it is the bag of the season"—while fashion curator Fernandes-Wong adds the crucial qualifier that it must be "part of the zeitgeist." Popularity is the test; the four components are the mechanism.
