The Balenciaga Le City Is Having a Major Renaissance, and We Are Obsessed

There’s a reason why fashion is obsessed with the early aughts. It was not only the era of the It-bag, but in a world before social media and overly curated wardrobes, personal style was actually personal.

Those obsessed with fashion and pop culture got their inspiration from the original style blogs of the early aughts, powered by paparazzi shots of A-listers (and B and C-listers, too) going about their daily lives with their favorite It-bags in tow.

An Ode to an Icon: the Original Balenciaga Le City

And few handbags were as coveted in the 2000s as the original Balenciaga Le City Bag. Designed by creative powerhouse Nicholas Ghesquiere, who spent 15 years as Balenciaga’s Creative Director, the Le City will go down as one of the most influential It-bags of modern handbag history.

Since the debut of the very first B-Bag in the early aughts, the Le City has been reinterpreted time and time again, with specific colors and novelty iterations becoming incredibly sought after and hard to find.

With the recent revival of the Le City’s original silhouette, the bag has further cemented its importance in fashion. Launching yesterday, January 30th, the new Balenciaga Le City Paparazzi campaign celebrates not only the bag’s iconic significance but also the influential importance of a bygone era.

The campaign, which utilizes paparazzi images from the early 2000s, features supermodels like Alessandra Ambrosio, Claudia Schiffer, Tyra Banks, and more, alongside pop-culture icon Paris Hilton. The original images are digitally altered to integrate the Le City revival and finished with a unique watermark that pays homage to the branding used by stock photo websites.

Discover more below and shop the Le City via Balenciaga.

Images courtesy of Balenciaga