A stranger stopped me dead in my tracks on the train last week. It wasn’t the person so much as the giant bag slung over their shoulder: a cream-colored Chanel Cambon tote, plucked straight from 2006. Millennial fashion girlies know exactly which bag I’m talking about: the boxy shape, the iconic double-C logo, the pillowy quilted exterior. The Cs, mind you, are comically large. They’re so garish and conspicuous, they make Juicy tracksuits look subtle.
The Cambon tote was one of the “it” bags of the decadent and label-obsessed 2000s. Man, what a time to be alive—and have disposable income. Paris Hilton defined celebrity, Fergie’s “Glamorous” dominated radio, and the economy was still fairly intact. “More, more, more” was the motto, and it helped Chanel Cambon totes flourish. The handbags’ on-the-nose design—almost a parody of itself—made them catnip for anyone scouring TMZ for paparazzi snaps of hungover celebs slurping Starbucks frappés, their bloodshot eyes shielded by giant Dior shades. This was the era of bottle service and Britney, of The Devil Wears Prada and Von Dutch. So, in other words, if you were carrying a Chanel bag, you wanted everyone within a thousand-mile radius to know it.
The Cambon’s cultural dominance truly crystallized on a 2006 episode of MTV’s The Hills, a show arguably more emblematic of this period than any other. Our blonde, fashion-addicted heroine, Lauren Conrad—Teen Vogue intern, L.A. club queen, purveyor of the blankest of blank stares—was desperate for a Cambon tote for Christmas. “I’ve always wanted a Chanel bag,” she says deadpan to her then-roommate, Heidi Montag (another beacon of the superficial noughties). “Then it would just be a Merry Christmas.”
Merry, it was, when Conrad’s scruffy then-boyfriend gifted her the all-black version of the bag in the next scene. Conrad squealed with glee, her happiness more palpable here than anywhere else on the show’s six seasons—including when she (finally) went to Paris, her supposed biggest dream. Not bigger, apparently, than having a Chanel Cambon tote to call her own.
Lauren Conrad and her Chanel Cambon bag in 2007John Shearer
