There’s nothing quite like a star-packed fashion show to hard launch a handbag. At Gucci’s Cruise 2025 spectacle back in May, staged in the industrial depths of the Tate Modern, Debbie Harry herself introduced the latest iteration of the Blondie bag, with brand friends Daisy Edgar-Jones, Little Simz and the Mosses for company. Five months later, the house has released its campaign and it couldn’t be more London – Debbie Harry rides in the back of a black cab, cloaked in Ancora red, to the sound of “Heart of Glass”.
The curved top-handle model embossed with the house emblem is new creative director Sabato De Sarno’s second spin on a house classic. Having already souped up the Jackie – the shoulder style famously named after Mrs Kennedy – he turned his hand to a ’70s classic.
While there isn’t a specific muse behind the Blondie’s plump silhouette, it harks back to 1971, when Gucci patented its now-famous interlocking G-motif. Imagined first of all in suede to mirror the fashion of the decade, the Blondie made a comeback at the label’s Love Parade show, memorably staged on Hollywood Boulevard, back in 2019. Gucci fans, from Anne Hathaway to Jodie Turner-Smith, Elle Fanning to Alexa Chung, soon snapped up the slimline shoulder style with optional chain straps for a bijoux edge.
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De Sarno’s Blondie is tougher than its predecessors. Designed, as per the brand notes, to bridge eras and weave together the various chapters of the house story, the new-look style is crafted from Tuscan leather or GG-printed canvas for a fresh street-style twist. It’s the Ancora versions, realised in De Sarno’s rich, almost oxblood palette, that have proved to be catnip for Gucci girls. Edgar-Jones – who praises De Sarno’s “fun and cool” vision – is already carrying one and… well, that’s all you need to know.
