Furla unveils 90th anniversary collection

London - Italian luxury accessories brand Furla has unveiled a limited-edition line of handbags to celebrate its 90th anniversary.

To celebrate the milestone, creative director Fabio Fusi has created nine versions of the label's popular Metropolis bag, all of which will have special flaps to reflect a decade and all use music as inspiration.

The 1920s ‘Charleston’ bag is encrusted with stones to evoke the Art Deco period, while the ‘Jazz’ bag honours the decade of glamour the 1930s, and the 1940s ‘Swing’ with its petal and ruby check showcases the frenzied joy of music and dance.

For the 1950s the pink, turquoise and onyx bag celebrates the age of ‘Rock & Roll’, the 1960s ‘Beat’ bag has a flap that is like a turntable resting on a desaturated Union Jack flag, while the 1970s honours the age of the disco revolution with its disco ball design, and the ‘Punk’ bag with its heart shaped safety pins, studs and a denim tongue celebrates the 1980s.

The final two bags are the 1990s the ‘Hop Hop Techno’ bag with its onyx and orange rubberised thermo-adhesive strip detailing, while the 2000s celebrates the dawn of the new millennium with its silver laminate lined with a folding plate like a robot face.

Each of the nine handbags include its decade printed somewhere on the flap, for a numbered effect. Furla’s 90th anniversary collection will be available in stores and online from May 2017.

The Italian label was established by the Furlanetto family in 1927, but it didn’t open its first storefront until 1955 in Bologna, which still exists alongside a portfolio of more than 400 stores worldwide, half of which are still directly controlled by the company.

In the 1970s, when Aldo Furlanetto’s sons Paolo and Carlo and daughter Giovanna took over the family business, is when a new era at the Italian label began and it started its global expansion. In the 1980s was when the brand started expansion abroad, with stores opening in Paris and New York, followed by Tokyo in 1990.

In the new Millennium, Furla turned into a lifestyle brand adding men’s collections, shoes, jewellery and licensing for eyewear, watches and textiles collections. The result has seen Furla selling two million bags in 2015, one every sixteen seconds and the brand has sold more than 517,000 Metropolis bags since 2014.

Images: courtesy of Furla