Credit: Loewe
What makes a bag an it-bag? Why do some models become cult objects? In the case of Loewe's Puzzle Bag, perhaps it all starts with the strength of the original intuition: that of creating an object that flattens completely and then resumes its shape, like origami. Ten years later, the brand is celebrating its anniversary with a campaign that highlights its manufacturing and eccentric personality.
To create a Puzzle Bag, the leather pieces are laser-cut, finished and painted by hand in the Madrid atelier, before being assembled. What makes its design unique is the fact that the three-dimensionality is obtained solely through cutting and sewing, without the use of rigid armatures.
The bag was revisited in 2023. While in the original model the leather panels were applied to an internal structural base that allowed the bag to fold, in the new version the flaps are sewn directly together. The new modeling has created a very different result from the original: more compact and structured, but lighter, making the Puzzle an even more desirable piece.
It is a bag with ten years of history that continues to be part of the collection: it is a piece of design that is dressed in ever-new versions, each one becoming a collector's item, thanks to the most diverse workmanship such as patchwork, jacquard, or embroidered leather.
It appeared for the first time in the men's spring 2015 collection, and was then presented in the women's show of the same year. In an interview with Another Magazine, former creative director of Loewe Jonathan Anderson said that its creation happened almost by mistake: "I remember seeing the handle, the shoulder strap, part of a bag, part of another bag, putting them all together. I turned to an assistant and said: this is it."
Its high resonance on social media also contributes to increasing its relevance and making it iconic: just think of the brand's hypnotically beautiful making-of videos or the now famous campaign with actress Maggie Smith.
After ten years, the Puzzle Bag is re-proposed in nineteen editions with a charm, also made of leather, consecrating it as an essential piece: a bag that embodies at the same time the highest expression of craftsmanship and a free, original aesthetic, capable of continually reinventing itself without ever losing its character.
