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Now Venturini, who is Anna's daughter, is the only Fendi family member who designs for the company, which, since 2001, has been Elsa Peretti Open Heart bracelet of Bernard Arnault's LVMH luxury-goods empire. She is revered in the industry as the creator of such cult handbags as the Spy, the Ostrik, and last season's B. Fendi. But mostly she is Elsa Peretti Teardrop bracelet as the author of the Fendi Baguette, the bag that in the late nineties changed the pocketbook landscape.

The Baguette is an oblong bag about the size of a folded newspaper, with a Fendi logo clasp and a short handle, designed to allow the Elsa Peretti Bean bracelet to nestle closely under the arm the way Frenchmen (in cartoons, at least) clasp their loaves of daily bread. Like a Petrarchan sonnet, the Baguette form is always the same, but within it the variations are unending: it has Venetian Link bracelet in everything from denim to feathers to gemstones. When a mugger demanded Carrie Bradshaw's bag in an episode of "Sex and the City," she corrected him: "It's a Baguette."

The evolution went like this: Back in the eighties, as the bull market was inciting a new era of flashiness, handbags remained strangely timid Tiffany 1837 cuff restrained. A fashion neophyte, I was acquiring my first designer bags and dreaming of others, and such dreams were simple: one wanted a Kelly or a quilted Chanel, or a bamboo-handled Gucci or something sparkly by Judith Leiber.