Meet HENRYS with Heart: Luxury Bags Selling Democratic Values

Valentino S.p.A. CEO Jacopo Venturini stood with Pierpaolo Piccioli on the awards stage in London at the BFC Awards.

Valentino creative director Pierpaolo Piccioli was named Designer of the Year at London’s Fashion Awards 2022 held at Royal Albert Hall by the British Fashion Council last December.

The night celebrated Piccioli’s journey to the heights of European fashion, walking in the footsteps of his maison’s founder Valentino Garavani.

British Vogue covered the event, including the actual work of the BFC Foundation, which nurtures design talent through all levels of their careers with money, mentoring and education.

Sponsoring and nurturing young talent takes money — with over $1 million invested in advancing young designers by the BFC last year alone.

Piccioli’s red Valentino Garavani Locò bag featured above in Steven Meisel’s new Spring 2023 campaign photography is like so many underestimated women. With her impressive name Locò is small, but she is also mighty. And she is worth millions.

No dress, coat, jumpsuit, trousers or jacket escapes our attention when we look at the next seasons runway collections. Yet it’s accessories — and especially bags — that pay the bills.

Valentino Garavani designer bags are no different. Call them handbags, clutches, bucket bags and purses. These fashion queens belong to the same sorority. The Valentino S.p.A. business posted a 41% jump in annual sales in 2022, rising above pre-pandemic levels. Two-thirds of the company’s revenue came from accessories — with bags leading the way.

If you want to support young designers, invest in luxury handbags associated with your values.

The creatives working on Valentino Garavani are on the front-end of major changes in why we buy certain brands. Pierpaolo Piccioli likes the word ‘democratic’ to explain how he is approaching new design codes for the house. His direction is filled with pleasant surprises.

Meet the HENRYs

It’s a competitive market we bag people live in. The luxury handbag market size was valued at $58.3 billion in 2018 and is expected to reach $89.9 billion by 2026. Much of this growth is driven by the HENRYs, who are plentiful on AOC.

In AOC’s case this vibrant audience of HENRYS — and especially female HENRYS [High-Earners-Not–Rich-Yet] — are willing to invest longterm in luxury fashion pieces. According to consumer credit agency Equifax, HENRYs earn between $100,000 and $250,000 have digital savvy, love online shopping, and can be big spenders on luxury products. 

AOC’s HENRYS tend to be HENRYS with Heart — which is why Valentino Garavani is courting them. The design group led by Pierpaolo Piccioli understands the complexity and range of our global, cultural creative values.

Bags are much more than a fashion statement to HENRYS. A really good bag that will last decades is a purchase HENRYS will invest in. Indeed, it is a symbol of success, but it’s also a symbol of smarts and heart.

Never underestimate the influence and impact of a Valentino Garavani bag as evidence of HENRY credentials. The smarts part mean you are also investing in ‘heart’ — which includes the humanity connected to your bag and the planet at large.

’The New Maison’

‘Democracy’ and ‘democratic values’ are not words we typically associate with luxury labels, but exceptions are declaring themselves.

No stronger statement about the importance of this emerging vision of luxury — practiced by Apple for years — is the understanding that Virgil Abloh at Louis Vuitton Men was not a one and done.

AOC said from day one that Pharrel Williams was headed to Louis Vuitton Men, so we were shocked by how stunned everyone else was with his appointment. AOC reached out to Vogue Business that weekend. Coincidentally or not, a much more examined piece appeared Monday morning “From Sabato to Pharrell: The role of creative director re-examined.”

Pierpaolo Piccioli absolutely understands both sides of this issue — as articulated by Vogue Business. The designer brings deep knowledge of artisan craftsmanship as ‘old school’ respect for the design process. Anchoring design and production in these timeless principles is key. But the Valentino Garavani design studio creates fashion and accessories that also reflect this ‘new democracy’ streak embraced by Virgil Abloh and now Pharrell Williams at Vuitton Men.

We’re not sure who was first to lead models out into the street after a fashion show — for the express purpose of mingling with the crowd: Gabriela Hearst or Pierpaolo Piccioli or Virgil Abloh. This small action is just one example of changes embraced by a small but growing number of luxury designers.

Piccioli has been a leader in these changes, prompting us to write in December 2020, Pierpaolo Piccioli Was Woke Before Naming Zendaya as New Brand Face. [Note that Zendaya recently became an ambassador for Louis Vuitton.] We forget how much change was forced upon fashion world in May 2020 [death of George Floyd in America] — after several years of minor change on key issues involving every kind of representation from race to body type.

From his perspective, Piccioli wants “to resignify the brand and how it is generally perceived. It’s like a different take on a familiar landscape.” Zendaya “embodies and represents what Valentino is and stands for today,” Piccioli explained to the press. “She is a powerful and fierce young woman that uses her talent and her work to express herself, her values and her generation as well.”

Piccioli’s relationship with Black models is at the top of luxury fashion houses. In his spectacular January 2019 couture show, the creative director and designer featured a dominating majority Black models extravaganza, reflecting a historic commitment to Black model representation. Writing for the Times, Vanessa Friedman reported that of 65 models, 45 were Black.

“As a designer I have a voice,” Piccioli said in the moment. “Hopefully a loud one. I want to use it.”

The ‘Unboxing’ Campaign Goes to Younger People and Their Values

In a very real sense, buying a designer bag or purse from Valentino Garavani, Chloe or Louis Vuitton Men is becoming a values-driven decision as well as an aesthetic one. You can purchase a new bag because it’s on a Top 10 must-have bags list, or you can buy a new bag because you like its shape, its materials, its craftsmanship and the brand values of the luxury name behind it.

If you are buying a bag for investment or for your first major luxury fashion purchase, avoid a trend and go for brand values. All signs point to a better return on your investment and now you are consuming with conscious purpose.

The Values Driven Handbag

Just yesterday, a simple self-education on Louis Vuitton’s new Capucine bag with a Kintsugi handle led us not only to the ancient Japanese concept of restoration and repair but to a new life philosophy that rejects the word ‘flawless’. That debilitating word is replaced by the concept of ‘wabi-sabi’, which is both an appreciation of natural objects and the reality that nothing stays the same forever.

Imagine looking at a bag and understanding the philosophy of the design principles behind such a simple piece of functionality as the handle.

You can tease me and say “Oh, Anne, it’s only a bag! It’s a Louis Vuitton Cappucine bag, for heavens sake!”

I reject that idea — that it’s “just a handbag.”

The best brands in the 21st century are built on more democratic principles, with the highest levels of artisan craftsmanship center stage, and that includes a focus on the people who made the bag. When a brand puts inclusive marketing campaigns, body and racially-diverse models and improving sustainability principles into the mix, we can carry that bag with pride.

For HENRYs with Heart, these stories and values lead us to our credit cards. And this evolution of consumer principles is in its initial stages.

In the words of Vogue, “Piccioli has proven himself to be a particularly sensitive and thoughtful protagonist. His spring collection was dubbed ‘Unboxing’, as in thinking out of the….”

How far out of the box will the designer travel in his next Fall/Winter 2023 runway show in Paris on March 5th? You will just have to return to AOC and read about the event.

We promise you, though, your Valentino Garavani bags are worth their weight in gold — and we’re not talking only resale value. We’re talking branding DNA. That doesn’t change from season to season. It’s not a trend but rather a bag you can hold close to your heart — and with pride. ~ Anne