If there’s one thing Maria Grazia Chiuri, chief creative officer of Fendi, knows how to do, it’s make a comeback. After all, it’s been almost 30 years since her first stint at Fendi as an accessories designer, working alongside the five Fendi sisters and helping launch the house to cult status in the Y2K era.
In between, she led Valentino and Dior as creative director — and if you remember the relaunch of the Dior Saddle bag, rising like a phoenix from the ashes in 2018 to land on every influencer’s arm, that was all her.
Now, Chiuri is back at the place that started it all, this time leading the charge. It’s fitting that with her return to Fendi, she chose to mark her homecoming with yet another fresh take on an iconic bag.
“I was so excited to re-edition something that was in my memory,” Chiuri says. “The first thing that I did was to look to the archive and it was really exciting to see the Fendi Baguette, with the mirror, with all the other embroidery that I remember so well.” You remember the bag, too. Beaded, embroidered, mirrored. In leather, suede, fur, canvas. Maybe most famously, the purple and sequined version with a gold “FF” logo slung over Carrie Bradshaw’s shoulder in the “Sex and the City” episode when she’s robbed at gunpoint. You know the line: “It’s not a bag, it’s a Baguette.”
But when Chiuri looked back through her own archive of accessories, she remembered something else. Another little bag, meant to be tucked under your arm the same way that the Baguette does — an addition to the Fendi bread basket, if you will. “I remember after two or three seasons Carla [Fendi] said, ‘After the Baguette, we have to make the Croissant,’” Chiuri says and laughs.
And so the Fendi Croissant was born, making its runway debut in the fall/winter 1999 show. A half-moon in the size and shape of the real French pastry, the same “FF” hardware almost comically large against the bag’s small frame.
Actor Eva Yelmani clutches the newly relaunched Fendi Croissant bag, which is back in the spotlight under Maria Grazia Chiuri’s vision.
(Maripol / Fendi)
It was this little bag that Chiuri chose to bring back with her this time around. In October, she released a reimagined Croissant Bag for Fendi’s Cruise 2027 collection.
But a comeback isn’t as simple as just re-creating the same bag. To Chiuri, it’s also about paying her respects to the house and family that began her career. “I was so lucky to work with the five sisters,” she says. “They gave me the opportunity to start my job, to express my creativity. I feel the responsibility to give back my best.”
Part of that manifests as a desire to protect the house’s heritage of craftsmanship. Chiuri likens that craft to a language Fendi speaks through its design.
“The idea is to build a new language, but at the same time, to maintain a strong heritage of the house, especially in a category like a bag, where our history is very important,” she stresses. “The idea is to come back to our original craft and really work on it because it’s so special, so unique.”
But don’t expect to see anything you’ve seen before in the new Fendi Croissant. On the shelves of the Fendi Rodeo Drive store sits a collection of the new and improved Croissants: one that’s chartreuse and sequined with black leather straps, one in jaguar print ponyhair that’s more fringe than bag and one made completely in leather that looks like crushed silver foil. There’s even one resembling a glistening rainbow Nerds Gummy Cluster.
During our interview, Chiuri emits a modern cool. I can see it in the relaxed, oversize suit she’s wearing, and the way her hair is thrown up in a claw clip. It’s in her signature smudged, black-rimmed eyes. This is the woman that put “We Should All Be Feminists” on a T-shirt and sent it down the Dior spring/summer 2017 runway for her first show with the house. She’s not here to give you something old.
But a comeback isn’t as simple as just re-creating the same bag. To Chiuri, it’s also about paying her respects to the house and family that began her career.
When she sat down to redesign the Fendi Croissant, the first thing she thought about was where she’s going to put her phone.
“So I said, bah, we probably have to change its size because it’s necessary to put the phone inside,” she says. “But at the same time, the idea was to also add the fringe — to give an attitude different from the past.”
This bag also seems to represent a new chapter for Fendi, where under Chiuri’s vision, pieces from different seasons are still interconnected — things make sense together because they’re speaking the same Fendi language.
True to her word, there’s a Croissant for any season and any situation. There’s a Croissant I see that’s perfect for brunch, another that will match a New Year’s party disco ball, a Croissant you won’t lose sight of in the club, an overdressed-for-a-hike Croissant (or maybe just a steep walk up Sunset Boulevard Croissant).
Whatever you thought a Fendi bag could be, it is — and it’s also something different. “The Fendi world is more well known by my generation, the generation that knows ‘Sex and the City,’” Chiuri says. “I want to introduce this brand to the new generation, but I don’t know that they know ‘Sex and the City.’”
At this point, I assure Chiuri that I, personally, do know “Sex and the City.” But I get what she’s saying. And as I sit and listen to her, I realize something. In the words of Carrie Bradshaw, I couldn’t help but wonder … What if the bag was more than a bag all along?
It’s not just the new Croissant bag that’s drawing from — and breathing new life into — the archive, it’s Maria Grazia Chiuri herself and even the Fendi woman she represents. An icon can leave, change, come back and still be iconic.
