Gucci Bamboo
The handbag with a handle of bent bamboo, made in Florence when leather was rationed after the war.
Guccio Gucci had worked at the Savoy Hotel in London and seen the luggage of wealthy travellers before opening a leather-goods shop in Florence in 1921. After the Second World War leather and metal were hard to get.
The workshop began using bamboo from Japan, which was heated and bent into handles. The Bamboo bag became one of the brand’s classics and appears in films of the 1950s and 60s.
Materials: Leather or suede, bamboo bent with heat
Manufacture: Made in Gucci’s workshops in Florence from 1947.
The bent bamboo handle with its nodes.
The rounded, saddle-like leather form.
The clasp and the straps that attach the handle.
The bag with the bamboo handle appeared in 1947.
A semicircular handle of heat-curved bamboo, often a rounded bag in leather or suede, and a metal clasp.