Did the dachshund inspire the next It bag?

NEW YORK – Over the past year or so, a growing number of brands have embraced a new handbag shape. It is neither bowler nor baguette; not a satchel or a saddle.

Skinny and elongated, it has a figure similar to that of a hot-dog bun – or a wiener dog. You could call it a dachshund bag.

“I think it’s the newest, freshest shape we have seen in the market in the last three to four years,” said Mr Will Cooper, senior vice-president for women’s designer clothing, shoes and bags at American department store chain Saks Fifth Avenue. “It feels like something people don’t already have in their wardrobe.”

Khaite, Jil Sander and Tory Burch are all fashion labels that have made bags with the oblong shape, which some in the industry have named “east-west”.

Among the first brands to introduce it was French fashion house Alaia, which called its version the “teckel” – or “dachshund” in French. (That and the other newer styles are not to be confused with a four-legged bag that American designer Thom Browne released in 2016 and that was named for and made to resemble his wire-haired dachshund Hector.)

Mr Cooper said the recent crop of dachshund-shaped bags were “noticeable without being logo-focused”, placing them somewhere between styles associated with the quiet luxury trend and others with heavy branding.

“These are still sophisticated and understated but not in a quiet way,” he added.

Alaia’s creative director, Pieter Mulier, introduced the teckel bag at a runway show in July 2023.

He landed on its shape while aiming to develop a bag that looked out of proportion, a representative for the brand said in an e-mail. Mulier often takes his black Labrador retriever, John John, to Alaia’s studio.

Mulier works partly in Paris, the capital of a country where dachshund ownership has been on the rise.

According to Centrale Canine, the French equivalent of the American Kennel Club, the number of dachshund puppies registered with the organisation increased by 4 per cent in 2023 compared with in 2022, while the number of all purebred puppies registered decreased by 11 per cent in 2023 compared with the year before.

The breed is popular in Paris, said Ms Fleur-Marie Desfougeres, a director at Centrale Canine, because its small stature makes it more suitable for city living.

French designer Simon Porte Jacquemus, who lives and works in Paris, adopted a spotted dachshund in 2020 and gave the dog, Toutou, his own Instagram account.

American designer Sandy Liang, who included a bow-embellished, oblong-shaped bag in her fall 2024 collection, said its form reminded her of a pencil case. “If I was a little kid drawing a purse, this is what it would look like,” she added.

With some of the mini bags that became popular in recent years, people found it challenging to fit certain essentials – “My phone, my readers, my wallet” – as Kyle Branch, fashion director at the Dallas boutique Forty Five Ten, put it.

The bags shaped like dachshunds, he said, “hold all of that while being compact”.

During recent fashion weeks, bags with the silhouette were spotted in the spring 2025 collections of labels such as Bottega Veneta, Prada and Conner Ives. The shape has yet to be fully embraced by mass-market brands, but Branch believes that is possible.

“They have gained a lot of momentum over the past two seasons, and based on history, everything that performs this way has a good shelf life,” he said of the bags. “I don’t think they are disappearing. They are special and easy.” NYTIMES