I've accumulated several vintage Aigner bags (others listed now or coming soon), mainly because it seems the older ones are always nicely made of high quality materials. This one seems even older than the others, though, just in the way it's made. The leather is definitely cowhide and unusually thick on front and back, stiff enough to hold its almost triangular shape, with edges left semi-raw (I think burnished with gum tragacanth, this thing actually was handmade as the label says). The shape itself looks like a late 50s or early 60s frame bag, relatively short double shoulder straps and 4 little brass feet, and it does have that odd industrial rounded nut hardware that earlier Aigner bags seem to have. Yet I think the giant horseshoe A logo only really became a thing in the 1970s, no? It's confusing. It's one giant A though, a full 2" tall with the leather backing patch, sort of unmistakably Aigner.

This bag has some overall scuffs, scratches and bumps, which I think can be seen in the photos, but nothing terribly distracting. The piping and the straps seem to be a slightly different type of leather and a duller red shade than the body, but just less saturated. This has so many compartments, it's really like a 60s bag in that, a place for everything. The snaps are the oval type from the 60s, deliberately molded with concave and convex sides to snap together very securely. (I think these were superior to later handbag snaps, and it seems like cost cutting caused the switch to magnetic in the 80s. These are much more secure, with very long knob portions.) The lining of the main compartment is dark red leather, a bit scuffed up now and with a few spots, but not bad. The heavy black faille lining of the pockets is very clean and seems a lot like the more durable fabric liners in 40s and 50s day bags than the various satins that came later.

The color...well, this bag is definitely red, but not the same red all the time. It's various shades with even only slight changes in the light, as I think can be seen in the photos. They're as accurate as I could get and they're all in daylight, but this red is never really the same exact shade twice. (This bag was among the hardest things I've ever tried to capture for color. Eventually I decided it was changing color if I looked at it too hard, so we have it here in all its moods.) It's a relatively bright red, but deep, and more crimson than carmine in lamplight. Significantly darker and less orange than a fire engine red, and much less burgundy than oxblood, it's interesting. The red issue seems important to me as there was a period in the early 70s, and briefly in the early 50s too, when Etienne Aigner bags were always only red, as his signature color for leather goods (bags always matched belts, shoes, etc.), "Antic Red" then being a variant of oxblood...but with some confusing variation in hue over the years. But always some kind of red. (Weirdly, current Aigner makes not one single bag in any shade of red now, though prices are back where they were, around the $600 to $800 range now, which is similar to decades ago if adjusted for inflation, due to handcrafting and higer materials costs. Why they have eschewed all reds now I don't know.)

Anyway, I've found dating vintage Aigner bags fairly confusing, and I don't think I'm completely alone here, not least because the Aigner of Germany (Etienne Aigner AG of Munich) has been separated from the Etienne Aigner Group of the US for some decades now, but the logos are near identical. It appears the German bags are, or at least were, made in Germany, but the Aigner bags sold in the US decades ago seem to have been USA made, at least certainly in the beginning, and then production was shifted to Italy, though I can't figure out exactly when. (Much later quality declined precipitously, with bags made wherever labor was cheapest, but that certainly wasn't the case when Étienne Aigner was not just designing, but actually hand fabricating the bags, belts, wallets himself. It's not clear to me when the "Hand-made" disappeared from the logo, but it was decades ago.)

In any case, what I did find was info on Étienne Aigner himself (1904-2000), who was a surprisingly interesting person, so I pass it on here. Born István Aigner to a Jewish Hungarian family in what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire (in Érsekújvár, then Hungary, now Slovokia), he began as a bookbinder, fell into leather goods almost by accident, and was an entirely self-made man. Some time in the 1930s he immigrated to France, still a bookbinder, but fled Paris when the Nazis occupied the city in 1943. But he didn't run for the hills, instead going into the mountains and fighting with the French Resistance for years. Fortunately he survived WWII, returned to Paris, and began to apply elements of his bookbinding training (books used to be bound in leather) to producing a variety of handmade leather goods, at first using the book presses to shape the material. His work was unique and gained a following, eventually even drawing the attention of major European fashion houses of the day (Lanvin, Rochas, etc.) for the unusual designs and high quality. (One source mentioned the use of odd industrial hardware in the early pieces, including a hinge made for refrigerators. I can believe this, based on the peculiar hardware still seen on earlier Aigner bags.)

Eventually, after apprenticing with Christian Dior and Cristóbal Balenciaga, Aigner left Paris for New York and, in 1950, presented his leathergoods under his own brand, using the stylized A monogram shaped like a horseshoe as the logo. It's not clear to me exactly what went wrong in NYC at first, but it seems there was a disconnect between the typical mass-production methods of midcentury America and Aiger's insistence on handcraft and high quality materials. Apparently this is how Antic Red was born (as in antique, antiqued, dark, rather than histrionic or whatever) as his signature color, first for belts and then for handbags. He was working alone out of a room in his house then and could only afford one can of dye so he chose the dark wine red or oxblood color as a kind of neutral. (Who would have thought?) Even with that apparent rude NYC awakening, though, Aiger prevailed, his solo work eventually gained a following in New York as it had in Europe, and through the 1950s he was able to expand into other colors and many new designs, apparently selling quite a lot through Lord & Taylor. By 1965 a Heiner Rankl of Germany had negotiated rights to the Etienne Aigner brand in Europe, at which point the Etienne Aigner AG of Munich was created. In the 70s there were more expansions, an Etienne Aigner Italy founded in Florence, the advent of luggage and shoes, and at least the German wing of Aiger went public in 1983. There were confusingly many Aigner products and brands by then, and even more later. But Étienne/István had somehow managed to rise from a humble immigrant bookbinder, born under a monarchy and living in times of grave antisemitism, to an internationally famous designer who in the end actually conquered the world of fashion with his creativity and determination. (All this should be more well-known, no? I'm always curious about brand history for vintage things, but this man was truly noteworthy.) So I look at Aigner's bags differently knowing all this, especially the older ones, and I can't help but like him as a person. I'm glad he lived to the age of 95, a long and exciting life -- and also left us so many interesting bags.

If I forgot anything, we're always happy to answer questions. And we have more vintage leather bags coming!