Small bags are in again, and they don’t come more charming than Longchamp’s spring-summer 2022 collection.
“The whole collection is Provence-inspired and really Parisian,” says Dina Tantoco, Rustan’s marketing communications manager. “They’ve really been highlighting their French-ness and the French lifestyle.”
Picture a Sunday family lunch at a home in Provence, with generations gathered around an old oak table set with colorful earthenware and crisp linens. Linen is a key theme of the collection, in fact, thanks to Longchamp’s collaboration with Charvet, purveyor of the finest French linen tea towels since 1866.
Last summer the two houses partnered on the Le Pliage Filet shopping net bags, and it was such a sensation — Emily carried the lemon-yellow version in Emily in Paris — that it sold out all over the world, including the Philippines. (Currently the Rustan’s boutiques are carrying only black and white Filets but more colored ones are coming soon.)
This season’s must-have iteration of the iconic Le Pliage is a white linen tote bag with a vertical red and blue stripe, in a fashion-forward tribute to traditional French craftsmanship.
Aside from the Le Pliage tote, the season’s key bags reference traditional straw basket and bucket shapes, like the Epure bucket bag in different colored leathers.
The emblematic Roseau is also reinterpreted as a bucket bag in grained leather and LGP jacquard canvas, as well as motifs inspired by the ready-to-wear designed by Longchamp creative director Sophie Delafontaine: an embroidered bud print, floral tapestry pattern and that blue and white cotton stripe.
Dina’s favorite style happens to be the Le Pliage: “I like the small Pliage, which they always come out with in different sizes,” she says. “I heard from the sales staff that it’s the size people really look for now because they don’t want to carry everything.”
What a refreshing change, from having to carry practically your whole house with you to now having a bag small enough to fit your phone and little else. Now, that’s true luxury.
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Longchamp is exclusively available at Rustan’s Makati, Rustan’s Shangri-La, Rustan’s Cebu, Greenbelt 5 and Rustans.com .