On an early September evening, the block of Paris's Rue de Richelieu behind the Bibliothèque nationale de France was quiet and sparsely populated with two exceptions. The first was me, the lone tourist on the massive library's side, on my way to dinner. The second, on the opposite side, was a line of shoppers snaking out of an elegantly lit store's entrance and around the corner. At the very front, a security guard blocked the entrance and fended off pleas from the first two women in line—cash in hand—to bring the exact bags they wanted outside for them.
It wasn't an otherwise commercial street, but I could sense that I'd stumbled upon a shopping moment. In fact, I unintentionally passed the first and only (at that time) storefront for the minimalist French handbag brand Polène. Due to the line, I couldn't make it in before it closed, but the scene outside the store made an impression. As did the obviously Parisian women I saw carrying Polène shopping bags throughout the city on the last day of my trip. Plus, the Polène unboxings and "honest reviews" I was served on TikTok over the following days.
On the phone a few weeks later, just after opening the label's second-ever store, in New York City, I have to ask Polène cofounder and figurehead Antoine Mothay if the fervor I witnessed outside the store is normal for a weekday. Do people lineup every day for one of his bags? And do they beg security to shop for them if they can't get in?
"Every day? No," he laughs. "Lots of days, yes."
Polène was founded in 2016. At the time, Mothay says, women in need of an everyday bag could choose between two extremes. "When we started the brand, there were great luxury brands with great design and history, and then there were more accessible brands that were … I don't want to say copies, but they were very inspired by the big brands. For us, there was a lack of creativity and quality."
Mothay worked with his two siblings to develop an ethos that's mostly unchanged from then to now: leather bags at fair prices in shapes that are playful without losing any functionality. (This isn't a totally new proposition in the wide world of leather bags: Neous, Mansur Gavriel, and Senreve have all offered their own twists on the same phenomenon.) Then and now, Polène's bags are hand-made in Ubrique, Spain, and the top seller remains the nano size of the Numéro Un, a top-handle bag with a cross-body strap.
The shopper has the same sensibility as the bag itself: Regardless of age, she's usually a minimalist with a sense of "singularity," Mothay says. And a passport, he adds. Unbeknownst to me on that day in Paris, shoppers regularly travel from across the world for a chance to shop at Polène's first store. It's also built a strong Parisian contingent since opening.
In the meantime, the brand has taken over FashionTok despite having fewer than 10,000 followers on its own brand account. Polène's hashtag, though, has 18 million views. Add "bag" to the end of #polène, and there are another 5.4 million views. Most are of women tearing open their first orders for the first time, or deploying some age-old ad copy—"luxury bag without the luxury price tag"—over a video of their first, or second, Polène. In my personal favorite, a creator says, "Yes, bitch," to someone offering handbag advice just because they're carrying Polène. In a video with more than 25,500 likes and 314,000 views, handbag expert @tanner.leatherstein deconstructs one of the label's backpacks, cutting apart the sides and tearing out a discreet metal bar to conclude, "For a fashion brand, I think they're delivering great value to you."
Then there was an Emily in Paris cameo in Season 2 and placements in Princess Kate's wardrobe, among other celebrity endorsements. It's been a gradual rise. "Every year, we've doubled the volume of our sales, but every year, it's the same products," Mothay says. "Something like Kate Middleton wearing our bag helps a lot to give credibility to the brand. The shop in Paris helped a lot. But it's not like [our success happened in] one step."
Clearly, this is a brand that needed more than one outpost beyond the Internet. After more than a year of searching, Mothay and his team set up shop on the corner of Broome Street and Broadway. "Even for a French small brand, opening in the United States is a very important step," he says.
I visit the long-awaited New York City store on a quieter day. It's an airy, wood-paneled space by French architect Valeriane Lazard, who also designed the Paris location. Everything is light, open, and deceptively minimal, like the bags themselves. They sit perched on wooden shelves that line the walls, with select styles (like a deep green hobo bag) featured on stands near low-to-the-floor couches and chairs. A terrarium inspired by the 1997 Alexander McQueen show of the same name greets shoppers front and center at the door. Soon, it'll be replaced by a machine that customizes key chains and wallets.
The hush over the space at 5 p.m. on a Monday isn't what the scene looks like on weekends, and especially not when the boutique first opened. A store associate I speak with says that some previously-online-only shoppers were so excited to finally shop for a Polène bag in person during its debut weekend that they cried. No one bursts into tears in front of me, but I do see groups of women stroll in and out in packs, murmuring about a bag they saw online.
Polène doesn't seem to need ostentatious embellishments or saturated Pantone leathers to move units or inspire minor meltdowns. So far, new releases at the store have come and gone from shelves at a steady clip. All available Numéro Dix bags, for example, completely sold out over the New York boutique's opening weekend.
Mothay never mentions "hype" or "virality" on our brief call, but he does bring up "quality" 11 separate times. "We work every day to have lots of desirability," he tells me. "It's important that people who wear our bags are proud." He remains insistent on taking Polène at a step-by-step, stitch-by-stitch pace to maintain that quality—momentum and TikToks aside.
Maybe the cofounder is being too modest. With the scale of Polène's ambitions, it could go from a cult-followed, IYKYK-label to the discerning minimalist's first choice globally. Already, Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Taiwan are contenders for new boutiques of their own, and a Polène representative also confirms shoes and jewelry are on deck for a mid-2023 arrival. Cue the happy tears.
Halie LeSavage is the fashion commerce editor at Harper's BAZAAR. Her style reporting covers everything from reviewing the best designer products to profiling emerging brands and designers. Previously, she was the founding retail writer at Morning Brew and a fashion associate at Glamour.
