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.
The party girls of the 2000s weren’t carrying just this bag, obviously. There was the slouchy Balenciaga Motorcycle bag—arguably the most photographed purse of the era—the Yves Saint Laurent Muse, the Fendi Spy, the list goes on. Like the Chanel Cambon tote, each of these big handbags has an instantly-recognizable design—but their most crucial commonality is their size. They’re all massive, sometimes to an outlandish degree. Some might say ludicrously capacious. So big, photos of Nicole Richie and Mischa Barton carrying their Balenciaga bags look like optical illusions. Are these purses supposed to be as large as the humans carrying them? Yep!
Because Richie and Barton and Lindsay Lohan had places to go, y’all. The Ivy for lunch. The Chateau Marmont for drinks. Kitson for sweatsuits. Les Deux—may she rest!—for sitting stone-faced in a corner booth, texting on a T-Mobile Sidekick. Our girls simply didn’t have time to go home, which meant they needed all their essentials on hand. Much like a soccer mom who isn’t leaving her driveway without a tote full of Gatorade, fig bars, and Band-Aids, the early-aughts celeb required a gargantuan bag to anticipate all scenarios. Sweaty after a night at Bungalow 8? The Chanel Cambon tote had room for multiple water bottles, not to mention your digital camera, Blackberry, iPod, new clothes, and Parliament Lights.
No Big Bratty Bag moment was more profound than Mary-Kate Olsen carrying Balenciaga, circa 2005. Tabloid consumption was at an all-time high when paps caught Olsen with a mint green Motorcycle bag practically falling off her shoulder. I can’t speculate its contents, of course, but the purse’s bottom was splattered with a now-iconic red wine stain that almost looked intentional. With a cigarette in hand and her face partially covered by bubblegum pink nails, Olsen looks totally unfazed in these photos. My theory as to why? The bag. It’s durable, it’s reliable, it’s ready for whatever the L.A. party scene—or Perez Hilton—hurls her way. Including Pinot noir.
Big handbags offered more than just utility for the girls back then. They were armor, a means to “block out the haters” before that cringe term was even coined. The fact Olsen’s tattered, dirty purse is the most memorable relic of this period speaks to the sheer power of Big Bratty Bags themselves.
And now, they’re back. Absurdly big handbags started emerging as a trend in 2023, and this year’s runway shows fully embraced them. Everyone from Burberry to Fendi to Miu Miu featured models carrying large status-y bags (some with clothes spilling out of them for dramatic effect, a la Miu Miu). This chaotic style is reminiscent of the Paris-Nicole-Lindsay glory days of Y2K—which, in a way, have resurged thanks to Charli XCX’s Brat summer (and now fall).
With her album, the pop star fully reintroduced the 365-party-girl mindset to the zeitgeist, making plenty of references to its mid-aughts peak—and dressing the part. (She even, hilariously, performed an entire song with an oversized Gucci bag slung on her shoulder during her Saturday Night Live performance this fall.) Since the record’s release in June, it feels like culture hasn’t stopped raging.
It makes sense, then, that we’re swapping our minimalist, Barbiecore micro-bags for slouchy totes we can literally live out of—and use as pillows in the Uber home from the club. And with “loud luxury” permeating fashion in 2024, it’s only a matter of time before one of these new Big Bratty Bags becomes as infamous as Mary-Kate’s wine-splotched one.
As a fashion-editor friend texted me after I told her about the Chanel Cambon tote I spotted in the wild, “I just got this MASSIVE bag that I want to run over with a car to get that Olsen distressed look. I want it to look filthy and expensive.”
Christopher Rosa is the senior editor for NBC Entertainment and a former Glamour editor. Follow him at @chris.rosa92.
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