Starting today, Balenciaga celebrates the quarter-century anniversary of its most beloved bag with Le City House, new campaigns, and a collection designed by Damien Hirst. The story of an object born without a logo that became a language.

No logo, no fanfare, no campaign. In 2001, <a href="https://www.lofficielitalia.com/fashion/pierpaolo-piccioli-balenciaga-lascia-direttore-creativo" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Balenciaga</a> &#39;s Le City arrived almost on tiptoe in an era that was otherwise speaking loudly: monograms everywhere, rigid silhouettes, accessories designed to be recognized from a distance. Nicolas Ghesquière , then the house&#39;s creative director, went in the opposite direction and designed a bag that didn&#39;t ask to be looked at, but to be used, consumed, carried everywhere.

Le City House, the installation for Balenciaga's 25th anniversary Le City (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Le City House, the installation celebrating Balenciaga's 25th anniversary at its headquarters at 10 Avenue George V, Paris (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

The archive section of Le City House in Paris, including original designs, editorials, and more (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

The nail turned into a bag The starting point is an everyday, almost proletarian garment: the motorcycle jacket, a soft armor and a symbol of independence. Ghesquière takes its vocabulary and translates it into Arena lambskin, so supple it drapes and adapts to the wearer. Then there are the details, which today are codes. The long leather laces on the zipper pulls, the metal buckles on the curved corners, the overlocked handles, the prominent external pockets, the conical, flat-headed studs scattered throughout. The result isn&#39;t a rigid object to be placed on a restaurant table. It&#39;s a bag that envelops the body and follows its rhythm, perfectly consistent with the founder&#39;s vision. Cristóbal <a href="https://www.lofficielitalia.com/fashion/martine-rose-nuova-direttrice-creativa-balenciaga" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Balenciaga</a> , who opened his maison in 1917, conceived each piece of couture as an extension of the wearer, a way to liberate movement rather than constrain it. A couturier unconventional, as historian Mary Blume recalls, &quot;He didn&#39;t follow the scene, because the scene was him.&quot;

«The City by Balenciaga, created to go unnoticed, impossible to forget»

Paris, Balenciaga's 25th anniversary campaign for City (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Paris, Balenciaga's 25th anniversary City campaign (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Who turned her into an icon? The prototype&#39;s fate was decided in the atelier, and that&#39;s where Kate Moss came into play. It was her open enthusiasm that convinced the maison to put the bag into production. From that moment on, the history of Le City coincided with that of its devotees. The press quickly took notice: roomy enough to hold the tech gadgets of the time, devoid of any flashy branding, it was dubbed the Anti-It Bag. The name also underwent a slight evolution: City initially referred only to the medium size, before becoming the name of the entire line. The paparazzi do the rest. Gisele Bündchen , Paris and Nicky Hilton , Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen , Sarah Jessica Parker , Nicole Richie . All photographed with Le City hanging from their forearms, well before any real official communication existed. A cult built on the street, shot after shot. Suffice it to say that that first version appeared in only one campaign, shot by David Sims in 2006. Three creative directors, one DNA With Demna, the codes of Le City are rewritten. In 2020, the essential lines of the Neo City, and in 2022, the maximalism of Le Cagole, which revives the leather-framed mirror. Buckles and thimble-shaped studs migrate to shoes, accessories, and ready-to-wear. It&#39;s no longer a bag: it&#39;s an alphabet. The official relaunch of the original arrived in 2024, with a campaign once again starring Kate Moss . Subsequent campaigns reinterpreted old stolen shots of off-duty models, placing the original owners alongside today&#39;s It Girls. 2025 brings another circle to a close. Le City finally makes its runway debut, in an even more luxurious version, in Pierpaolo Piccioli &#39;s first collection for the house. And the ensuing campaign brings the bag back to the lens of David Sims, the photographer who first immortalized it.

Kate Moss with the iconic Balenciaga City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Gisele Bündchen with Balenciaga's iconic City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Sienna Miller with Balenciaga's iconic City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Clemence Poesy with Balenciaga's iconic City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Choë Sevigny with Balenciaga's iconic City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Mary-Kate Olsen with the iconic Balenciaga City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Sarah Jessica Parker with the iconic Balenciaga City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Nicole Richie with Balenciaga's iconic City bag (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

The City House: Paris, then the world For its twenty-fifth anniversary, Balenciaga has chosen to celebrate not only the object itself, but the community that made it what it is. The heart of the celebrations is Le City House , an immersive, multi-room experience open to the public, debuting at the historic Parisian location at 10 Avenue George V from today until November 19th. The journey begins in the archive. Original designs interact with editorials, newspaper clippings, and paparazzi photos from 2001 to the present. Then the collectors&#39; closets open, displaying everything their bags have preserved over the years: handwritten notes, obsolete technology, and small fragments of lives lived. One room is dedicated to the limited-edition collection co-designed with Damien Hirst .

A portrait of Damien Hirst (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

Balenciaga's 25th Anniversary City of Los Angeles Campaign (Courtesy of Balenciaga)

By appointment, a dedicated service salon is available: new handle laces, personalized charm advice, mirror engraving, hand-painted monograms, leather care and repair evaluations, to ensure every Le City , from any era, remains in circulation. After Paris, Le City House arrives in New York (Greene Street, November 14th to January 10th), Tokyo (Aoyama, November 18th to January 5th), Shanghai (Taikoo Hui, November 24th to December 6th), and Beijing (Sanlitun, December 11th to 20th). Further stops will follow at Balenciaga boutiques around the world. Twenty-five years ago, it was the bag that refused to be an It Bag. Today, it is perhaps the It Bag par excellence, passed from hand to hand through three generations and three creative directors. What if the secret to its longevity was precisely what Cristóbal Balenciaga understood a century ago: an object truly belongs to the person who carries it, even before the fashion house that designs it?

Balenciaga Le City’s 25th Anniversary: The Anti-It Bag

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