Key takeaways:
- On 10 May, Dior’s next major bag release, the 30 Montaigne, will go live with an ambitious influencer campaign.
- The bag was one of 10 prototypes proposed by creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri for the pre-fall season and was ultimately chosen for its easy-to-carry size, inviting shape and sub-€3,000 price tag.
- While some pundits complained of being inundated by social media posts about Dior’s Saddle bag launch last July, Dior has no plans to roll back on influencer marketing.
When Christian Dior presented its Pre-Fall 2019 collection last December, the French luxury brand debuted a new, mid-sized handbag. The bag was rather simple — a rectangle with a wide flap cinched by a vertical belt and secured by a large CD clasp. It was shown in a logo fabric version and several subdued shades of calf leather from jet black and mahogany to a deep powdery green that calls to mind Farrow and Ball paints.
To the unobservant, which included me, the bag did not register. It wasn’t as showy as the Dior Saddle bags, which debuted with a virtual tidal wave of Instagram-influencer posts last year, or the larger, flashy, hippy-ish Book totes, which could carry a stack of legal files and a change of clothes for the gym. But the 30 Montaigne bag, named after the brand’s original address in 1946, has a big job to do for Dior when it launches 10 May.
With a starting price of €2,500, the 30 Montaigne bag is the anchor to a new wardrobe that creative director Maria Grazia Chiuri hopes to define for the label — an “icon”, Dior chairman and chief executive Pietro Beccari tells Vogue Business.
In other words, it’s meant to be a cash cow for Dior — the sort of accessory that has broad appeal and offends no one’s sensibilities; a workhorse bag that can be carried every day with a variety of looks.
“My goal with this bag was to try and create a new classic which, through its design and key elements, would be a manifesto for rebooting Dior’s hallmark styles in a contemporary manner,” Chiuri explains.
When the bag debuts this week in Dior stores and online, you can expect the same blanket coverage that the Saddle bag got when it re-launched last July with a flood of influencer postings on social media that left some people feeling inundated.
“If I never see another Dior Saddle Bag again, it'll be too soon,” wrote Fashionista’s Alyssa Vingan Klein. She described seeing 30 social media postings of the Saddle bag within a couple of hours of its launch.
But when asked if he learned anything from the Saddle bag’s revival that he would change with the Montaigne, Beccari replies with thundering enthusiasm, “God forbid! I don’t want to change anything!” he says. “I want to have the same success as the Saddle bag.”
The 30 Montaigne enters the dizzying $91 billion annual global handbag market at a crucial point for LVMH, for whom fashion and leather goods last year provided its fastest revenue growth (but not its fastest profit growth), increasing 19 per cent to €18.5 billion. Handbags these days cross the gamut from practical totes to tiny bags that are more jewellery than purse, big enough to hold only a book of matches and a breath mint. Brands race to sell consumers these accessories, which have the advantage of fitting every body size and whose profit margins far outpace ready-to-wear.
“Today is a very noisy world so if you want to have a successful launch it has to be a very coordinated one,” Beccari continues. “If you want to be heard, you have to shout very loud.”
The Montaigne’s journey began quietly, though, in Chiuri’s Paris design studio last summer.
Chiuri started her career as an accessories designer, working at Fendi and later at Valentino, where she eventually became co-creative director with Pierpaolo Piccioli. At Dior, most of the attention publicly is given to her ready-to-wear designs. But she thinks about accessories design constantly. “For me, research, constant comparison and collaboration with workshops are fundamental for developing a new accessory,” she says. “It’s through experimentation and the inevitable trial and error that we find the right path.”
Thinking that through, she says she realised the key factor of the 30 Montaigne bag. “I realised that the shoulder strap is a fundamental element in the contemporary bag because it makes the bag adjustable in relation to the body that wears it.”
She was inspired by uniforms — a recurring theme in her work — so she added a cross-body strap so the bag could be worn as well as carried. The strap was to be removable, creating a clutch. Creative types could thread a scarf through the loops to create a strap.
The 30 Montaigne was one of about 10 bags that Chiuri proposed weeks later to a group including Beccari and the marketing team, in a meeting that took place at the studio. There were other proposals for a hit “It” bag as well as niche bags with more limited appeal, Beccari says.
The Montaigne stood out immediately, he says, due to its “togetherness”.
What is togetherness? Beccari searches for details as he attempts to describe the instinct that seemed so obvious at that moment. He mentions the easy-to-carry size, the inviting shape, the logo clasp that was functional rather than purely decorative and the price — well under €3,000. It all added up to a potential hit.
“We saw it was a winner when we saw the first prototype,” he says.
Though reviews of the Autumn/Winter 2019 collection barely mentioned the bag, observant clients noticed the 30 Montaigne in the lineup. It was to be made of box calfskin or logo fabric, with soft calf sides, a silky lambskin lining and two internal pockets. A waiting list formed.
Store employees around the world were trained about the bag’s story and manufacture. The courses were conducted online via what the brand calls the Dior Academy, where staff trainers educate employees worldwide about its products, history, methods and Chiuri’s intent. “It’s a real school in Paris,” Beccari says. “You need to have a story to tell to the consumer to make them dream... In the store is where the game is won or lost.”
The waiting list and pre-orders grew during the early spring — always a good sign before a launch. But in this case, some store managers became over-eager. By April, some managers had pre-sold their entire allotment of the bags, leaving none for the all-important window displays for the 10 May opening. Dior scrambled to ship bags from stores in other regions, but those store managers were loathe to give up their allotments, Beccari says. It takes several months to create new inventory, he notes.
“That makes us a little bit in trouble,” Beccari remarked on Tuesday, heading into the final lap before launch.
Not the worst sort of trouble, of course.
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