Hermès Kelly

The Kelly is a small, stiff leather handbag in the shape of a trapezoid, narrower at the top than at the base. A flap with a cut-out edge folds over the front; two narrow leather straps pass across it and close on a metal turn-lock, from which a little padlock hangs. There is one handle on top. Underneath, four metal studs keep the base off the ground. Everything is saddle-stitched in linen thread, by one craftsman, over about twenty hours.

Its origins are equestrian. In 1892 Hermès, then still a saddler, made a tall bag for riders to carry their boots and saddle. In the 1930s Robert Dumas, son-in-law of the head of the house, cut the idea down to a woman's handbag, structured but roomy, with a shoulder strap that could be added. It was launched in 1935, under a name the sources cannot agree on.

The name it has now came twenty years later. In 1954 Grace Kelly went to Hermès with Edith Head to shop for Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief. Two years on, as Princess of Monaco, she was photographed holding the bag in front of her, hiding a first pregnancy that had not been announced, and the picture went round the world. Women went into Hermès asking for the Kelly bag, and in time the house gave in; one account puts the official renaming as late as 1977.

Nothing about the bag changed when its name did. It now comes in sizes from fifteen to fifty centimetres and in some twenty leathers, made in Hermès workshops across France and sold in its own shops, not on its website. The bag Princess Grace actually carried, scuffed from years of use, was lent by the palace for the V&A's exhibition in 2010, where it was the star exhibit.