The 12 bag shapes — and what each one is worth secondhand
Every handbag you have owned is a version of one of twelve shapes, each an answer to what someone needed their hands to do. Watch the film, then read where each shape came from and its median secondhand price in Worthmore's data.
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46 minutes · 13 chapters · published on YouTube · Watch on YouTube
Chapter 1 · 0:59
The Clutch
The bag that occupies a hand on purpose
Around 1800, European dress narrowed and the tied-on pocket had nowhere left to hide, so a small drawstring purse moved into the hand. It was called the reticule, which the French turned into ridicule. The film corrects the tidy story: the V&A says pockets stayed in use for another century, so what the reticule really invented was a bag you are seen holding.
From there the clutch behaves like jewellery. Van Cleef & Arpels, a jeweller rather than a leather house, cased the evening bag in metal in 1933 and called it a minaudière. Judith Leiber covered hers in crystal from 1967. Bottega Veneta's Knot, archived unnamed in 1978, became a signature in 2001. The price follows the occasion, not the capacity.
Median secondhand price
£420
Range £100–£2,722 · 8 models · good and like-new condition
Mid-table: below the chain bags and saddles, above the totes.
Examples in our data
- Judith Leiber Minaudière and Pillbox: Judith Leiber clutch prices
- Mark Cross Grace Clutch: Mark Cross clutch prices
- Jimmy Choo Celeste Clutch: Jimmy Choo clutch prices
- Alexander McQueen Bundle Clutch: Alexander McQueen clutch prices
Chapter 2 · 4:03
The Top-Handle
The doctor's frame, the Kelly, the Birkin
The next answer was to give the hand a handle. In 1850s London a leather dealer built a bag around a rigid frame whose mouth locks open on a hinge. It took Gladstone's name, and doctors adopted it because it left both hands free to work.
A rigid frame brings base feet, an inner skeleton and flat panels, and that structure reads as formality. Hermès shows it inside one bag: stitched on the outside (Sellier) it is sharp and formal, turned inside out (Retourné) it is softer. The Kelly descends from an 1892 saddle-carrier, was scaled down in 1935 and renamed for Grace Kelly in 1977. The Birkin followed in the 1980s, although Hermès and Sotheby's date its origin story three years apart.
Median secondhand price
£415
Range £15–£13,500 · 41 models · good and like-new condition
The widest spread of any shape, on the largest sample: generic frame bags set the floor, two Hermès names set the ceiling.
Examples in our data
- Hermès Kelly 28 and Birkin 30: Hermès handbag prices
- Lady Dior: Dior handbag prices
- Louis Vuitton Speedy 25 and Alma BB: Louis Vuitton handbag prices
- Mulberry Bayswater and Alexa: Mulberry handbag prices
Chapter 3 · 7:27
The Tote
Invented to carry ice
Take away the frame, double the handles and leave the top open. In 1944 L.L.Bean sold a canvas Ice Carrier for taking ice from the car to the icebox. It lasted a season, vanished, and came back in 1965 as the Boat and Tote; the company says nobody recorded why it disappeared.
With no structure, the tote is the cheapest shape a house can make at scale, which made it a way to bring new customers in. Goyard's Saint-Louis is the shape at its purest: coated canvas, two handles, no frame and no closure. Telfar's Shopping Bag, launched in 2014, runs the same logic in vinyl, and in 2020 it swapped a waitlist for a 24-hour open pre-order.
Median secondhand price
£385
Range £8–£2,450 · 27 models · good and like-new condition
The lowest median of the well-sampled shapes, and the second-largest sample.
Examples in our data
- Goyard Saint Louis PM and Anjou PM: Goyard tote bag prices
- Louis Vuitton Neverfull MM: Louis Vuitton tote bag prices
- Longchamp Le Pliage Original: Longchamp tote bag prices
- Celine Cabas: Celine tote bag prices
Chapter 4 · 11:00
The Chain Bag
February 1955, and both hands come free
In February 1955 Chanel ran a metal chain through the strap of a quilted flap bag and hung it from the shoulder, freeing both hands at once. She explained it herself: she was tired of carrying bags in her hand and losing them.
The film draws the object rather than the legend: 28 cm wide, 19 cm tall and 7.5 cm deep. The popular stories behind the quilting, chain and lining are told everywhere and documented nowhere on the house's own record, and Chanel had already hung a chain on a bag in 1929. Hermès (the Constance, 1969) and Gucci (the Marmont, 2016) answered with their own, and the high street copied the chain and quilting with no house attached.
Median secondhand price
£607.50
Range £35–£7,800 · 23 models · good and like-new condition
The second-widest spread of any shape, after the top-handle.
Examples in our data
- Chanel 2.55 Reissue and Classic Flap: Chanel handbag prices
- Gucci GG Marmont Small: Gucci handbag prices
- Saint Laurent Loulou: Saint Laurent handbag prices
Chapter 5 · 14:37
The Saddle
The shape nobody was allowed to own
Hermès began as a Paris harness-maker in 1837, but the bag that made “saddle” a shape people ask for by name came from Dior, borrowing a picture of horse tack rather than a saddler's method. John Galliano's design reached the runway in October 1999 for spring-summer 2000, and by July 2000 Carrie Bradshaw was carrying one in Sex and the City.
It now comes in micro, mini and medium sizes, plus a 2019 menswear version. Maria Grazia Chiuri relaunched it in 2018 with a wave of influencer posts. In 2022 Dior asked the EU trade mark office to register the outline itself; the board refused, finding it too close to an ordinary bag to be distinctive. Dior owns the name, not the shape.
Median secondhand price
£466.25
Range £112–£1,850 · 5 models · good and like-new condition
Examples in our data
- Dior Saddle and Bobby: Dior crossbody bag prices
- Burberry Lola: Burberry crossbody bag prices
- Balmain B-Buzz: Balmain crossbody bag prices
- Vivienne Westwood Yasmine: Vivienne Westwood crossbody bag prices
Chapter 6 · 17:46
The Bucket
The shape that never tried to be owned
The bucket started as freight. In 1932 Gaston-Louis Vuitton built a bag for a champagne producer who needed to carry his own bottles, five of them by Louis Vuitton's own account. The Noé that resulted takes the fewest possible steps from container to bag: two walls, a tapered base and a drawstring mouth, with no frame and no clasp.
Vogue's archive shows the shape across nine decades and many houses: a wartime drawstring duffle, a leather Hermès bucket by the 1960s, then Prada, DKNY, Coach and Ferragamo all at once in the 1990s. It has never been one house's signature, and no single name sits over its price.
Median secondhand price
£680
Range £160–£1,300 · 5 models · good and like-new condition
Examples in our data
- Louis Vuitton Noé and Petit Noé: Louis Vuitton crossbody bag prices
- Mansur Gavriel Bucket Bag: Mansur Gavriel handbag prices
- Loewe Flamenco: Loewe crossbody bag prices
- Brunello Cucinelli Soft Bucket: Brunello Cucinelli handbag prices
Chapter 7 · 20:55
The Baguette
Carried the way the bread is
Fendi's 1997 answer to a bag too small for the shoulder was a strap made deliberately short, so the bag clamps under the arm. Silvia Venturini Fendi has said the name was a joke about how the French carry bread, and that the short strap was meant to free women's hands, treating the bag more like a garment than an accessory. The drawing shows it: a rounded rectangular case about 27 cm wide and 6 cm deep, on a strap drop of around 15 cm.
Fendi restaged it for spring 2019, and Lyst's year-end index called it that year's biggest revival. Prada's Re-Edition rode the same nostalgia, but the film argues it works differently: a handle and a chain, not a strap drawn short.
Median secondhand price
£902.50
Range £550–£1,350 · 3 models · good and like-new condition · indicative
Three models only, one of them Prada's Re-Edition 2005, which our data counts as a baguette and the film treats as a cousin. Read it as indicative.
Examples in our data
- Fendi Baguette: Fendi handbag prices
- Louis Vuitton Pochette Métis: Louis Vuitton crossbody bag prices
- Prada Re-Edition 2005: Prada handbag prices
Chapter 8 · 24:12
The Hobo
The crescent and the slouch
Where the baguette clamps, the hobo slouches: a crescent of soft leather on one long strap that slumps the moment you put it down. The name's paper trail starts in the 1970s, when a New York designer called a slouchy bag the “littlest hobo”, and The New York Times later called it the handbag of the 1970s.
Gucci's half-moon became the shape's face. Cut in 1961, it became the Jackie because Jacqueline Kennedy was photographed with it so often, and Gucci reissued it as the Jackie 1961 in 2020. Unlike most hobos it closes with a piston clasp, not a zip. The film's point is the ceiling: soft bags don't sell cheaply, but no hobo reaches the prices of the top structured bags.
Median secondhand price
£427.50
Range £110–£1,350 · 13 models · good and like-new condition
A higher floor than the top-handle or the chain bag, and a far lower ceiling.
Examples in our data
- Gucci Jackie 1961 and Horsebit Hobo: Gucci handbag prices
- Bottega Veneta Veneta and Jodie: Bottega Veneta handbag prices
- Balenciaga City: Balenciaga handbag prices
- Chloé Marcie: Chloé handbag prices
Chapter 9 · 27:27
The Camera Bag
A working box, promoted
Photographers carried their kit in padded, rigid cases on long straps worn across the body, so both hands stayed free for the camera. Fashion didn't invent that box; it promoted it. Chanel dates its Camera Case to the 1980s under Karl Lagerfeld, which the film notes is the house's own account rather than an independent record.
Gucci's GG Marmont camera bag of 2016 is the clean modern example: 178 mm wide, 122 mm tall and 64 mm deep, redrawn from the house's earlier Soho Disco. Every version agrees on three things: a padded rigid body, a firm closure (usually a zip) and a strap long enough to cross the body. The proportions have never been fixed.
Median secondhand price
£445
Range £224–£900 · 5 models · good and like-new condition
The highest floor of the everyday shapes.
Examples in our data
- Gucci GG Marmont camera bag and Soho Disco: Gucci crossbody bag prices
- Saint Laurent Lou Camera: Saint Laurent crossbody bag prices
Chapter 10 · 30:34
The Backpack
1979, nylon, luxury turns its back
The backpack takes the bag off the hands altogether. The army had it first, with a metal-framed knapsack patented in 1878 that soldiers soon abandoned; outdoor gear came next, when the Norwegian mountaineer Ole Bergan curved the frame to fit a back. Fashion came last.
In 1979 Miuccia Prada made a backpack in military-grade nylon, breaking with a leather-only house. By the mid-1990s it retailed at $400, and the house's sales had grown more than sixfold in four years. The Vela, with its flap top, drawstring throat and, at first, no branding, became an anti-status status symbol. Louis Vuitton's turn came with the Palm Springs Mini, on the Cruise 2016 runway.
Median secondhand price
£96.25
Range £45–£1,200 · 3 models · good and like-new condition · indicative
The lowest median in the film, on three models: on this sample, buyers of function-first bags pay little for the story, though one bag in it reaches £1,200.
Examples in our data
- Prada Vela nylon backpack: Prada backpack prices
- Louis Vuitton Palm Springs Mini: Louis Vuitton backpack prices
- Longchamp Le Pliage backpack: Longchamp backpack prices
Chapter 11 · 33:43
The Belt Bag
The shape the room laughed at
Worn at the waist, the belt bag carries the valuables and asks nothing of the hands. The idea is old: the V&A holds a German leather girdle pouch made between 1500 and 1550, and Sports Illustrated featured a $10 leather version for skiers and hikers in its 1954 Christmas pages. Called chic in 1989, it then spent years as a punchline in American comedy (as the fanny pack; in Britain, the bumbag).
Streetwear brought it back around 2017, worn across the chest, and by 2018 Prada, Gucci and Louis Vuitton all sold one. No house has claimed the shape the way Hermès claims the Kelly. Until August 2026 Worthmore's catalogue had no belt bags at all; it now has five.
Median secondhand price
£360
Range £55–£580 · 5 models · good and like-new condition
The first figures this shape has had in our data.
Examples in our data
- Louis Vuitton Bumbag: Louis Vuitton crossbody bag prices
- Gucci GG Marmont belt bag: Gucci crossbody bag prices
- Prada Re-Nylon belt bag: Prada crossbody bag prices
- Burberry TB bum bag: Burberry crossbody bag prices
- Coach belt bag: Coach crossbody bag prices
Chapter 12 · 36:36
The Pouch
The bag that gives the hands back nothing
The last shape removes structure itself. Daniel Lee arrived at Bottega Veneta in July 2018, mid-collection and with no time to design from scratch, so he took an archive clutch, stripped out its darts and hardware and let it slump. What was left is one piece of leather folded around a frame with a magnetic hinge: no logo, no strap, and a single space you search by feel. He turned down a request to add a strap.
Pre-ordered in February 2019, the Pouch quickly became the house's best-selling bag and Lyst's most-wanted product of the year. Céline's earlier All Soft tried something similar and stayed a footnote; what changed was a house confident enough to ship it without a strap.
Median secondhand price
£912.50
Range £160–£2,400 · 6 models · good and like-new condition
The second-highest median on the page, on a small sample: the film's evidence that a house name can override the usual discount on soft bags.
Examples in our data
- Bottega Veneta The Pouch: Bottega Veneta clutch prices
- Louis Vuitton Multi Pochette Accessoires and Félicie: Louis Vuitton crossbody bag prices
- Loro Piana Extra Pocket: Loro Piana handbag prices
Chapter 13 · 40:05
The Puzzle
Is this a thirteenth shape?
Loewe's Puzzle, Jonathan Anderson's first bag for the house in 2015, is the one modern candidate for a thirteenth shape. Geometric leather panels are cut and stitched so the bag closes into a cuboid and folds flat again when empty; Anderson described it as a flat object with a three-dimensional function. It borrows its grips from the other twelve: by the handle, on the shoulder, across the body or under the arm.
The film tests the claim against Issey Miyake's Bao Bao, launched in 2010, whose triangular panels also turn from flat to three-dimensional, in soft mesh rather than rigid leather. The verdict: not a new answer, but the best redraw of the old ones. The twelve stand.
Median secondhand price
£1,262.50
Range £850–£1,700 · 1 model · good and like-new condition · indicative
One model and two price bands, the thinnest sample on this page. Read it as indicative.
Examples in our data
- Loewe Puzzle: Loewe handbag prices
The league table: median secondhand price by shape
Priced on the same day by the same method, the shapes fall into a pattern. Near the top are structured, scarce shapes and, less expectedly, the shapeless Pouch, which shows what a house name can override. At the bottom is the backpack, the purest function. In the middle sit the workhorses, the totes and top-handles, which carry the industry without ever being the story.
| # | Shape | Median | Range | Models (n) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Puzzle (indicative) | £1,262.50 | £850–£1,700 | 1 |
| 2 | Pouch | £912.50 | £160–£2,400 | 6 |
| 3 | Baguette (indicative) | £902.50 | £550–£1,350 | 3 |
| 4 | Bucket | £680 | £160–£1,300 | 5 |
| 5 | Chain Bag | £607.50 | £35–£7,800 | 23 |
| 6 | Saddle | £466.25 | £112–£1,850 | 5 |
| 7 | Camera Bag | £445 | £224–£900 | 5 |
| 8 | Hobo | £427.50 | £110–£1,350 | 13 |
| 9 | Clutch | £420 | £100–£2,722 | 8 |
| 10 | Top-Handle | £415 | £15–£13,500 | 41 |
| 11 | Tote | £385 | £8–£2,450 | 27 |
| 12 | Belt Bag | £360 | £55–£580 | 5 |
| 13 | Backpack (indicative) | £96.25 | £45–£1,200 | 3 |
Indicative: the figure rests on one to three models, so it describes those bags rather than the shape across the market.
Sources and method
Prices are Worthmore price data, August 2026. For each shape, the median is taken across the midpoints of Worthmore's researched price bands for bags in good and like-new condition, for the models we map to that shape; the range runs from the lowest to the highest end of those bands. They are research figures, not records of sales: a guide to the UK secondhand market, never a guarantee of what a bag will sell for. They are a snapshot that matches the film, while the brand pages linked above are updated as our research is refreshed. How we research prices.
The drawings are the film's own: measured in millimetres from the real bags and drawn front-on, with no logos or monogram patterns. Brands and models are named in text only. The history is sourced chapter by chapter in the film, and where accounts disagree the film says so rather than picking the tidier story.
Worthmore is independent and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or in partnership with any fashion house or brand named on this page, or with Vinted, Depop, eBay, Vestiaire Collective or any other resale platform. Brands and models are discussed as documented history and published market data. Nothing here is financial advice, a valuation, a recommendation to buy or sell, or an authentication.