Did We Just Collectively Forget the Bottega Veneta Pouch?

“Men are either eagle handsome, bear handsome, dog handsome, or reptilian handsome,” posits a viral tweet from 2023 referencing the reigning archetypes of attractive men in Hollywood at the time: Ryan Gosling, Henry Cavill, Heath Ledger, and Timothée Chalamet, respectively.

Because you see, dear reader, to be an inhabitant of the internet-verse these days means donning not just that red-hot it-bag and those viral Loewe logo jeans, but also that one must possess the boyfriend du jour.

And by the summer of 2024, when Luca Guadagnino’s Challengers hit the screen, the rodent man was the hottest arm-candy (of the living, breathing variety) to have on your arm. 

More svelte than stocky, more angular than athletic, the internet’s ratty new dalliances were suddenly rearing their pointed noses everywhere, drawing comparisons with Roddy St. James from Flushed Away and Stuart Little from Stuart Little in their wake, gracing Vanity Fair covers and Calvin Klein underwear, and professing of their unrequited love for Ratatouille.

But investing in an it-boyfriend—much like investing in an it-bag—requires its own (and sometimes equally frustrating) degrees of time, effort, and commitment (and sometimes a hefty price tag). 

This makes it all the more daunting once the trend pendulum has (inevitably and invariably) swung in the other direction, leaving you wondering whether you should consciously uncouple just yet. 

And that, it seems, is what many (formerly) proud owners of the Bottega Veneta Pouch have chosen to do, as resellers like Fashionphile and The Real Real are increasingly inundated by the (some say, dated?) design.

So, has the once-beloved BV Pouch truly had its run under the sun?

Slouching Towards the Pouch

Now the Pouch, like the mice and men of the metaverse, is one of those things with a certain je ne sais quoi that’s best left unspoken, whispered under one’s breath, than screamed at the top of their lungs. 

In fact, with its endlessly squishable under-the-arm silhouette that instantly emanates an air of authority (and a chauffeur-in-waiting), one might say that the Pouch was stealth wealth at its finest, from an enterprise whose ethos to date remains “when your own initials are enough.”

Yet, screaming is precisely what we’ve been doing when it comes to this blob of lambskin (or exotic croc, or snakeskin), and screaming and nauseam at that.

And you can hardly blame us, the easily excitable purse-people that we are, for getting a little too excited about the bag’s inception. A riff on that iconic Bottega clutch Lauren Hutton clutches under her Armani trench coat in the 1980 classic American Gigolo, the Pouch was the brainchild of (former) creative director Daniel Lee’s debut Spring 2019 lineup.

“There was no logo, no shoulder strap,” Lee recounted to BoF about having to wrestle Bottega’s merchandising department to get the bag greenlit: “It wasn’t really that functional, because you had to root around in it.”

Imagine their surprise, therefore, when the bag not only went to become a hit, but also was named the World’s Most Wanted product in 2019 by Lyst, garnering Bottega the coveted Brand of the Year award in the British Fashion Council’s 2019 Fashion Awards, along with a record-breaking four gongs for Lee himself, something that Lee’s precursors like Galliano, McQueen, or even former-mentor Phoebe Philo hadn’t achieved!

A Maverick’s Magnum Opus

Of course, the Pouch was precisely the kind of design language one expected of Lee, the Bradford-born “quiet radical” and former alum at Martin Margiela’s Maison Margiela, Nicolas Ghesquière’s Balenciaga and Phoebe Philo’s Céline (as the director of ready-to-wear) before taking over the reins from Tomas Maier at the formerly staid Kering label.

And it wasn’t just beginner’s luck. There was more to Lee’s repertoire, like those camera-ready Cassettes, square-toed Stretch sandals, and rubber-soled Tire boots, all rendered in the haunting, herbalicious hue of parakeet that Liana Satenstein describes, “infiltrate my feed, street style photos, and daily life. I am blinded by the little stomach-shaped Jodies in a shade of lime that reminds me of Nickelodeon Slime.”

But the Pouch, with “a tactile, soft, sensual, very photogenic aspect to it,” as Lee elaborates, was on a league of its own, generating both IRL and URL traffic as flâneurs and fashionistas from all over (Rosie Huntington-Whiteley and Hailey Bieber owned multiples) raced to lay their manicured hands on theirs. “I wish I could say it was all part of a deliberate strategy,” confided Lee later, “but no… It all happened quite by fluke.”

It was a genuine it-bag, “done so spontaneously to get through that first season. It was never something I thought would be so resonant,” Lee explains, in an age when the idea of it-bags was as good as dead.

Naturally, when Lee’s exit was abruptly announced in 2021, designer Lisa Marie Fernandez tweeted, “Oh wow… There won’t be any brands left that women can actually buy and wear anymore.” Meanwhile, Luca Solca, senior luxury analyst at Bernstein, quickly called it “bad news for Kering.”

Haute Heavyweight or Handbag Has-Been?

The Pouch, however, is not only very much of its name (I mean, it’s quite literally just a pouch), but also very much of its time. 

And even though common conscience dictates that something so thoroughly devoid of hardware, logos, patterns, or embellishments should, in theory, be timeless, every time I encounter a similarly ruched silhouette in the wild (and there’s certainly no dearth of that), my mind automatically reverts to those lockdown dog-days of endless doomscrolling.

In Vanessa Friedman’s words, Daniel Lee may have infused Bottega with “a coolly contemporary veneer. Which made it, of course, very hot.” Yet, it’s also entirely possible, as Friedman posits, that “British fashion, disheartened and in flux amid Brexit, was simply so desperate for a fairy tale it was kissing a frog and declaring him a king.”

Under Lee, Bottega indeed rose to heights it had never seen before. 

But it was also flashier, trendier, and, contrary to its core, much more recognizable. Those same glitzy Chain Pouches that once maintained up to 80% of their value on Rebag now languish in the backwaters of resale for a mere fraction of retail. The dopamine neons, limes, and oranges that made Instagram in the era of isolation feel like stepping into Technicolor Oz now tie it down to that same era, through little fault of the bag itself.

So, dated as it may be, if you still love the Pouch, dear reader, then by all means show yours some love today!