Everyone Has Baggage
The Balenciaga City Bag and A Few Of The Characters She's Picked Up Along The Way...
In 2001, Nicolas Ghesquière debuted the Balenciaga Motorcycle City Bag. Only a handful were produced, and the initial response was underwhelming. Let's not forget—this was Y2K, the streets were filled with Murakami Louis Vuitton Speedys, and everyone wanted to be Carrie Bradshaw with her buffet of Fendi Baguettes, a tough geography for a studded, logo-less accessory to navigate. But eventually, the stars aligned and the Motorcycle Bag found its way into Kate Moss's closet, and with its newfound 15-minutes of fame changed its name to Le City.
Slowly but surely, Le City's popularity would continue to rise, but the real Cinderella moment came around 2004 when Mary-Kate Olsen was constantly paparazzied stomping around the NYU campus with a rotation of colors of the Balenciaga accoutrement never leaving her side. As a millennial, these images are permanently etched in my brain—a moment in time where everything felt larger than life—venti coffee cups, oversized sunglasses—pre-iPhone, pre-Instagram, pre-Influencer. It. Was. Everything.
Like all well-rounded personalities—Le City has had to pivot over the years, taking a few long hiatuses to figure out her place in this crazy world, and she's definitely been the brunt of a few jokes and bad outfits. But, almost 25 years later, it's impossible to deny that the bag has never really lost its magic. Whenever I'm somewhere—it can be Erewhon, the DMV or Madison Avenue—I'll see someone carrying a City Bag in a color you just know perfectly suits exactly who they are, and every time, no matter what the circumstance I'm in, I think to myself the same thing..."they just get it."
Here a peek into the colorful life of the Balenciaga icon and a glimpes into the lives of of the characters she’s picked up along the way…
NEW YORK
'What? Yeah...I have it...ok...whatever.'
She rolled her eyes to her best friend Esther who was sitting in the shape of the letter L on the steps of The Met. 'Moms are so sus,' she mouthed while holding her iPhone an inch away from her ear.
'Sorry you're breaking – up gotta go!!'
Tossing her phone into the massive black crocodile handbag next to her, she let out a deep sigh.
'Dude, my Dad keeps saying he thinks the doctor crossed a wire when my Mom had her upper-bleph done and I think he's right. She's being so unhinged about the fact I borrowed this bag from her closet.'
'That's so mid,' Esther said without breaking eye contact from her phone. 'I feel like everyone's parents are projecting. You'll be at USC before you know it.'
Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted two girls from her lower school trekking up 5th Avenue, with Mister Softee cones in hand. From the time she could form a sentence, she had wanted to move to California: the weather, the celebrities, EREWHON! But as the days inched by, it hit her harder and harder that she was actually leaving New York.
'You want to split a Cajun chicken at Le Bilboquet?'
'So down,' Esther replied, finally looking up from her phone. 'Wait, the bag is actually such a slay!'
LOS ANGELES
Muddling through the pile in front of her, Sloane grabbed a pair of True Religion jeans. "ICONIC, but anything this low rise at your age will make you look desperate... save them for your daughter."
"You MUST hire Sloane as your stylist," were the first words that came out of everyone's mouth when she told them she was moving back to LA She had lived here for 16 years before moving to Geneva, arriving as a fresh-faced thespian from Nebraska with big dreams of becoming the next Alicia Silverstone. Just as she was about to move back to Omaha and marry her high school boyfriend, she landed a role in a melodrama called 'Members Only' that followed a group of Beverly Hills teenagers who started a cult within their private high school.
The paparazzi loved her, and America wanted to know every single detail of her life. After her character 'Calista Greywood' got killed off halfway through the 10th and final season of 'Members Only,' she married the heir of the largest perfume family in Europe who begged her to relocate to Switzerland to give their two kids a childhood out of the spotlight. A nasty divorce and a midlife crisis later, she was BACK, and not just in California—her agent had convinced her to take a role in an 8-episode series where she played the ex-wife of a billionaire who has a tantric love affair with her kids ski instructor. Once again she was the toast of the town.
As Sloane gripped a canary yellow Le City bag, memories flashed before her eyes—paparazzi outside Kitson, trucker hats, Zone bars, and a much older, very A-list actor inviting her to Geisha House.
"Sloane, if you tell me this has gone out of style, I'm just going to move to Ohio and open a bed and breakfast."
"Are you kidding? NEVER—it's iconic."
She sighed with relief. Everything had changed but nothing was different.
PARIS
Her bag was heavy, and Pierre was late as usual. In hopes of curbing his lack of punctuality, she had started making a point of standing on the corner outside his apartment with the heaviest things she could find, hoping to guilt him into cleaning up his act. A baguette, butter, a bottle of Sancerre mixed in with a pharmacy worth of Embryolisse and Biologique Recherche overflowed out of her Navy Blue Le City Bag—she looked like a caricature of France.
With each minute that passed, she began to fantasize what it would be like to run away with each and every man that walked by her on the cobblestone streets of the Marais. Contemplating lighting a cigarette to add to the lore, she noticed a group of American girls approaching her.
"Bonjour! Are we far from the Louvre?" asked the leader of the posse, pointing anxiously to the museum on the map.
"Mon cerveau est en grève," she replied in her thickest French accent, looking them dead in the eye. Stunned, they scurried off in the completely wrong direction.
Behind her she could hear Pierre fumbling at the door. It was time for a cigarette.
MILAN
Catching her reflection in the glass of a window on Via Montenapoleone, she gasped. 'That old lady cannot be me,' she thought to herself. After visiting the city for the first time last year, she and her husband had recently started renting a place in Milan, splitting their time between Dallas and Italy. With all of their kids out of the house, it was time for a new adventure.
She only knew one way to quiet these intrusive thoughts: shopping. But not even a Bottega Solstice and a pair of Saint Laurent Mules could help her shake the fact that no matter how young she felt inside, she was in fact getting older. ‘Who wants to learn a TikTok dance and write in a five-minute journal?’, she mumbled under her breath.
Sitting on the patio of Il Salumaio di Montenapoleone, nursing a Campari soda and engulfed in her own ponderings, she felt a tap on her shoulder.
"Sorry—we just had to say we're obsessed with your bag... you look so chic," two girls in crop tops and Sambas said to her, grinning ear to ear.
"Oh my god—I bought this years ago with my daughter when we were in Brussels!" she said with a smile, gripping the cherry red City Bag and thinking about what a perfect day that had been. "Thank you!!!"
Maybe some things really do just get better with age….
TOKYO
There were approximately 51 hours between the time the shoot ended and her flight took off. One day you're making TikToks in your childhood bedroom, and the next you're in Tokyo starring in a movie predicted to be the biggest love story since 'The Notebook.' 'Enjoy it,' her favorite gaffer on set told her. 'I have a feeling once this hits the theaters, your life will never be the same.'
She had planned her itinerary down to the minute: Flippers for fluffy pancakes, a steak sandwich at Ginza, and shiatsu from some hole-in-the-wall place a makeup artist told her would change her life. A few months ago, some random agent had gifted her a massive silver Balenciaga City bag with the hopes of taking her on as a client. 'What am I going to do with this?!' she asked her best friend Jesse over FaceTime. It turns out the handbag was the perfect sidekick to help one take on Tokyo, perfectly fitting two days' worth of outfits along with her entire skincare routine, still leaving just enough room for anything that might catch her eye in Shimokitazawa.
Looking down at the metallic designer spaceship, she knew that no matter what happened with the film, life had brought her around the world and she wasn't about to waste a second of it.
I feel the Milan story. Been carrying my black through several cycles. The magic of this bag is it makes you feel laissez faire and intentional at the same time.
Gorgeous writing!
I could truly read a book of these