Nearly 30 years on, Fendi’s accidental icon returns to its roots, as Maria Grazia Chiuri reintroduces the Baguette in a softer, more adaptable form at Milano Design Week 2026
The Fendi Baguette wasn’t intended to be a global phenomenon, as evidenced by the number 26424 attached to it when it was first designed by Silvia Venturini Fendi in 1997. To her, and to the house, it was just another bag – and she designed many. Yet when the soft, oblong bag emerged, dubbed the Baguette because its short strap meant it was carried squashed in your armpit, the way the French traditionally haul their loaves of bread, something sparked – perhaps because, as an endlessly reinvented canvas for embroideries and extravagance, it proposed a distinctly Roman ‘basta’ to all-pervasive 1990s minimalism. The Baguette fast became a fashion fetish – within 18 months, over 500 variations were proposed. Celebrating its almost-30th birthday, Fendi’s new creative head Maria Grazia Chiuri has revived the Baguette in its almost-original form, showcased in her debut show in February and now presented as part of Milano Design Week 2026. Chiuri has reverted to a softer body, and the original buckled straps, meaning it could be removed to convert the bag to a soft evening clutch, but with longer length, leaning it can sit at different points on the body. And the embroideries are drawn from the very beginning of the Baguette story – mirrors, baguette encrustations, zebra beading, you name it.
Following a debut at the Milan Montenapoleone flagship, 14 iterations of the Fendi Baguette will then be available at the Shanghai IFC and New York City 57th Street boutiques.
