Luxury Designer Bag Investment Series: Lady Dior Bag Review – History, Prices 2020

I started a series called: Luxury Designer Bag Investments – Are they actually worth the money? and will be going into the history & background, along with as many notes as possible into each Iconic Bag and how it reached Cult Status… and presumably stayed there!

As there are many bags, I will be posting a new one every week until I run out. ?

Today, introducing the…

Dior Lady Dior Bag

HISTORY: Why & how it became famous

It first debuted in 1994 and it was named the Chouchou or “favourite” in French.

It really became famous when Lady Diana started using it constantly. It was originally given by Bernadette Chirac the first lady of France as a gift to her at at opening of a Cézanne exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris.

(Bernadette Chirac is on the far right)

She wore it out to Liverpool in 1995 in an orange ensemble:

And then later on a 1995 trip to Argentina.

BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA – NOVEMBER 26: Princess Of Wales At Buenos Aires Airport, Argentina. (Photo by Tim Graham/Getty Images)

All of this press made the bag hugely popular, and made Dior baptize it the “Lady Dior” bag. They both clearly enjoyed using the bag:

The bag is still going strong, here is a design in the works from 2019.

This quilted motif was inspired by the Napoleon III chairs that were used in the first fashion show that Monsieur Dior himself staged, in 1947. It also had dangling gold-plated D-I-O-R charms first used on this bag but used on other bags later. It uses 130 pieces of leather, a total of 8 hours, and up to 7 artisans.

PRICE LIST for the Medium Lady Dior handbag

Year	Price in $USD
1995	???
2013	$3300
2017	$3450
2020	$4450

RETURNS ON A LADY DIOR BAG

The bag has returned 22% in value since 2013 when it originally cost $3300 – I couldn’t locate the 1995 price.

If we normalize it to 2020 dollars, $3300 back in 2013 is now $3656.38

In stores, it sells for $4450 in 2020, for a difference of $793.62 or 22% over what its price would be, taking inflation solely into account.

(Remember, value is also subjective because someone has to see that and buy it from you at that price, just like with stocks, but a lot trickier to liquidate. Also, who is going to buy an old bag when they can buy a new one for the same price?)

The S&P 500 had you invested that same $3300 and not touched it or added any money to it, would have returned: $6493.80 with the recent 2020 drop due to the virus: