This Book Shows Why The Fendi Peekaboo Is A Designer Bag With Personality

Fifteen years after its launch, the Fendi Peekaboo has never lost its eccentric personality. All that is captured in a new book that just launched in stores.

fendi peekaboo bag — A special 2022 design of the Peekaboo by artist Lukas Gschwandtner is one of the bags featured in the Peekaboo-K tome. Credit: Fendi

By FEMALE Staff, 11 Oct 2023

The origin story of the Peekaboo bag has become somewhat of a lore at Fendi. Exactly 15 years ago, Silvia Venturini Fendi, the brand's artistic director of accessories and menswear, wanted to create a bag which would whisper understated opulence (think quiet luxury, but for the Y2K years). Her lightbulb moment happened when she had the idea of creating an open, unfurled top handle bag to showcase the contrast between interiors of the bag and the external body.

"Simplicity is the real eccentricity. At that time, I was looking for a contemporary, traditional, and modern form that would satisfy the most sophisticated women," Venturini Fendi says in a statement. The third-generation member of the Fendi clan had wanted to christened the bag 'Hide-and-Seek' at first. But she decided to go with the more whimsical moniker Peekaboo – as a nod to the classic children's game 'peek-a-boo, I see you' – to capture the element of surprise within the bag's interior compartments. Thus began the story of the Peekaboo.

All these facets of the bag is now encapsulated in a new limited-edition tome called Peekaboo-K that has just been released in Fendi stores and on its e-shop. The publication features a collection of 80 bag photographs sourced from the house's archive, including the designs from its collaborations with celebrities like Adele and Cara Delevingne in 2014.

The book is divided into four chapters, each consisting of 20 beautifully shot imagery of the bags. These are accompanied by brief commentary from a 'Friend of the House' which include the actress Naomi Watts, the singer-songwriter and actress, Chloe Bailey and Japanese architect Kengo Kuma. That's what you call a book with full of surprises and delight.

Ahead, we highlight some of the Peekaboo bags through the years that have made it on the pages of this special publication.