1837 Hermes is founded in Paris as a saddle-and-harness-maker.
1896 Louis Vuitton, started as a luggage and leathergoods company in 1854, debuts its monogram canvas.
1913 Prada luxury leather goods maker founded in Milan.
1925 Fendi opens its leather and fur workshop in Rome.
1930 Coach opens for business in the United States.
1947 Gucci creates its bamboo-handle bag, the first of many iconic styles.
1955 Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel (above) creates her quilted bag with chain handle, in February, and names it the 2.55.
1956 Hermes renames a bag it created in 1892 the “Kelly” bag, after Grace Kelly.
1965 Fendi hires Karl Lagerfeld, who creates the FF logo.
1978 Miuccia Prada takes over the family company, and her backpack becomes one of the most important bags of the 1980s.
1992 Tom Ford joins Gucci and edits many of its classic handbag signatures: double Gs, horse-bits hardware, red and green webbing, and the hobo-style “Jackie” bag named for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.
1993 Kate Spade launches her line of bags.
1996 Marc Jacobs joins Louis Vuitton and redesigns the Monogram Vernis and forges collaborations with such artists as Takashi Murakami (2003).
1997 Silvia Venturini Fendi creates the “baguette,” and 600,000 are sold between 1998-2004, helped by such shows as “Sex and the City,” with Sarah Jessica Parker, above.
2000 Christian Dior, which had a hit with its 1995 Lady Dior bag popularized by Princess Diana, revives its leather goods department with the saddle-bag purse.
2004 A black crocodile Hermes Birkin bag that had been customized wth diamonds sells for $64,800 at Doyble auction house in New York
Sources: “Bags,” by Berenice Geoffroy-Schneiter (Assouline Publishing, 1994); “Handbags: A Lexicon of Style,” by Valerie Steele and Laird Borrelli (Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. 1999)
