Little Black Spy Bag

Hilary Duff has one, Nicole Richie has one and the Olsen twins have one each. The Spy Bag by Fendi is pure fashion: beautiful, stylish and most important of all, desirable. Created by Karl Lagerfield, the creative director of Fendi, this is not a classic handbag in the style of Chanel or Louis Vuitton. It does not ooze with the cold, clear feminine lines of old school handbags. Instead it screams out sassy, smart and willing to get you want whatever the cost. The true handbag for our celebrity obsessed culture where brainless nobodies like Paris Hilton fill our newspapers.

The Spy Bag Who Loved Me

The Italian fashion house Fendi was founded in 1918 but it wasn’t until the arrival of Karl Lagerfield in the 1960’s that the company became the fashion brand we know and love. The Spy Bag is just one of his many successes that started with his redesign of the Fendi logo. The distinctive double F logo, know as the Zucca, made the brand far more recognizable but it was the high quality leather goods that Lagerfield designed in the 60’s that made the brand. Picked up by high priced American department stores such as Bloomingdale’s, Fendi’ goods were now available to the fashion conscious, wealthy American woman with nothing better to do that spend their husband’s money.

Back to Black Bag

The crack addicted, crowd punching, walking disaster zone with a golden voice, Amy Winehouse was paid half a million dollars for doing a private gig at the opening of a Fendi store in Paris. You can see and exclusive video of Amy on the Fendi home page, www.Fendi.com. However there is little else of use on the Fendi website because it looks pretty but doesn’t have anything useful on it such as details of its products. Having something as crassly commercial as a list of stockists or suppliers does not fit the haute couture image despite the fact it sells ready made, off-the-peg clothes.

I Spy Bag

The most noticeable thing about the black Spy Bag is that the people who carry them do not fit the image. When you think of a spy, you think James Bond. Suave, sophisticated, stylish with a beautiful woman on his arm. If you look at the people carrying Fendi’s bags, they don’t match the image. Fendi is a brand carried by women who aspire to be the Bond girl, who want to be in with in-crowd but who fail to carry it off. Part of the problem is that Fendi’s brand is a target of counterfeiters on a large scale. Because the bags and all of Fendi’s range is available through high street stores, the average shopper may not realize they are buying a fake. If you are offered a Rolex for $99.99 you know it is a fake but how do you tell is a $99.99 Fendi bag is real or counterfeit. Not that it makes much difference. Both real and fake are made in chinese sweatshops. The only real difference is that if you buy a real one, your money goes into the belly of the multinational LVMH monster whereas if you buy the fake, honest criminals get your money.