Is the Neverfull Finally in Its Fashion Era?

“Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” – Murphy’s Law

Last week, I was having a classically frantic Friday. Between my morning coffee run, last-minute deadlines for the week, and an entirely unwholesome lunch with the sole nutritional value of vitamin C(convenience), I was tattered and utterly battered, disheveled, and not in that insouciant it-girl way.

The universe, however, had greater calamities in store, for as soon as I stepped out into the wider world, the heel on my chunky combat boot snapped clean in half, leaving me tippy-toeing on one foot – broken heel in hand – while precariously balancing my bulky barnacle-of-a-laptop laden bag in the other.

If you know me, I’m a fan of that old-world, well-loved and lived-in variety of chic. My things attain their own personalities through the miscellaneous trials and tribulations they undergo while within my possession.

My now well-worn PS1 remains the trustiest of schleppers, my flared jeans and leather jackets on endless rotation, my boots carrying the weight of the world on their soles. It’s what makes them inherently and characteristically mine.

So, this latest piece of wear-and-tear, while inopportune, wasn’t entirely unwarranted (what was unnecessary was when a feathered friend mistook my purse as her personal powder room on my hobble back home).

Louis Vuitton’s Neverfull, similarly, is one of those bags designed for such days of duress. Are they chic? Are they stylish? That’s up for debate. What they are, however, is gargantuan, ludicrous, and capacious, capable of carrying your laptop and spare footwear should such tragedy strike again.

And now, they’re also reversible?

The Economics of Aspiration

Of course, the Neverfull is certainly nothing new.

You’ve likely seen one at least once in your lives, and depending on the part of the city you’re in, you see one every hour. It’s the bag everyone owns, yet everyone hates. Like Liana Satenstein writes in her Substack: “Go to Tribeca or Midtown, and it’s as ubiquitous as a hair tie, slung over shoulders leaving Wholefoods, marinating on the ground at La Colombe, or brimming with Alo Yoga workout clothes, ever so slightly tipping over on an Equinox bench.”

In fact, while most other heritage houses have released their renditions of the high-fashion tote, be it Dior’s logo-emblazoned Book Tote, Saint Laurent’s cult-throwback Y-Tote, or even Goyard’s St. Louis (that, purportedly, the Neverfull was conceived as Vuitton’s answer to), few have managed to satiate the need for a multi-purpose shopper the way the Neverfull has.

As Nicholas Knightly, former director of leather goods design, opines in Louis Vuitton City Bags: A Natural History: “We didn’t have a bag for going to the beach, working, shopping, carrying baby equipment. The Neverfull is all of that combined.” True to its name, the Neverfull is really never full.

But practicality aside, the omnipresent tote has also become a bonus flex, an outward indicator of the long hours you work, of how happening your life is (You’ve got a job! You take SoulCycle classes! You eat organic!), and of just how damn busy you are. In the age that glorifies busy, carrying one automatically connotes a level of street-cred that your average fashion bag simply doesn’t.

And that’s what makes it so aspirational.

Inside Out and All About

Now, the Zaftig carryall, designed by Marc Jacobs in 2007, has been reinvented by the brand as a flexible, entirely reversible piece for functional fashionistas who want to go the extra mile. But wasn’t that always the case?

In Simulacra and Simulation, Jean Baudrillard argues that, in postmodern society, newness is merely the simulation of newness—things feel fresh and new today because they only stand in contrast to the way things were before.

And nowhere does this ring truer than within the realm of TikTok, where a now-viral video from 2023 by the user @luxecollective showed a “hack” for how the Neverfull could be flipped entirely inside out thanks to its “unique symmetry of stitching.”

As is perennially the danger with social media, the video fell into the wrong hands. Exactly a year later, the Neverfull Inside Out hit stores and waitlists, complete with an added shoulder strap, reimagined interiors in the classic striped textile (in the colorways Saffron, Red, and Rose Pondichéry), or more low-key leather variants in a campaign fronted by Sophie Turner.

Plus, in a turn of events by a luxury label that makes the buying experience surprisingly seamless, Vuitton even incorporated a two-sided viewing tool on the landing page for the Neverfull Inside Out so you can see how the reversible number looks from, erm, the reverse. If only this function existed for bags where the anterior and the posterior didn’t look identical.

And true to its functional-fashionista form, the reinterpreted black cowhide Neverfull was debuted by Zendaya, who confessed to Vogue that she’s “not always the most responsible bag owner”: “I might be throwing it around, it might get some real wear in it, you know, because I want to really use it.”

Because, at the end of the day, isn’t that what the Neverfull was meant to be?

But If It Ain’t Broke…

Clearly, the idea of the reversible Neverfull isn’t exactly novel. It’s simply a recontextualization of an original functional feature that never entirely caught on.

But then again, how many times have we recontextualized Mademoiselle Birkin’s overflowing Birkin or Mary-Kate’s beat-up Balenciaga to the point that beating up your bags (or bedazzling them with a befuddling number of bag-charms) has become a trend in its entirety? After all, for every detritus-slathered Olsen Kelly, there’s a Neverfull equally as well-aged and chic.

So, if the Neverfull’s latest reinterpretation helps dispel some of fashion’s searing classification of this classic style as “basic, ” why not?

Because fashion or not, the Neverfull remains one of the brand’s enduring bestsellers, on par with – if not actually more so – the Alma and the Speedy, both released nearly a century ago. Its rumored discontinuation, followed by the institution of a waitlist, caused an uproar among fans who flocked to resale-verse to get their fix, growing searches for the style by 160% almost overnight following the news.

Vestiaire Collective, for instance, still sees an average of 800 daily searches for the Neverfull on its site! Fans on the PurseForum adore the new variant, even if they refuse to reverse the bag.

Because at the end of the day, the Neverfull represents the lived-in reality for many a woman (and man), regardless of whether you’re a hustler who calls their weeknight dinners with friends “networking” and listens to podcasts at 1.5x speed, a suburban stay-at-home mom with her tittering tote of toddler tidbits, or a jet-setting starlet with frequent flyer élan.

Its overflowing interiors, on full display for the world to see, are almost an exercise in voyeurism, a quest to be seen, a scream into the void: ” Look at me, I’m living!”

Because when you’re out in the world with that gargantuan bag in tow, filled with the meaningful nothings that make up your life – the occasional broken heel notwithstanding – you really are living.

As Satenstein writes, “There was so much space to fill, so much to see.”

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