The XXL bags spotted at Copenhagen Fashion Week this season are not, it turns out, a passing provocation. They are the logical conclusion of a tendency that has been building quietly for a couple of years: the slow, deliberate expansion of everything we carry, wear, and reach for first.
The Scandi street has always been a more reliable forecaster than any trend report. Where London takes a season to absorb what Copenhagen has already put on its arm, the fashion insiders filing in and out of shows this season were unanimous in their oversized allegiances. Copenhagen Fashion Week has a way of making the gestural look inevitable, and the XXL carryall, slung from a shoulder or gripped at the handle, looked less like a statement and more like a straightforward decision.
The Bags That Defined the Season
Two styles in particular accumulated the kind of pavement-level attention that press releases cannot manufacture. The Loewe Flamenco, spotted repeatedly on the arms of those who know how to edit an outfit, carries a history that most of its admirers may not have considered: the bag was originally launched in 1984, then reimagined by Jonathan Anderson in recent years, according to Luxbags. There is something satisfying about that lineage. A bag that has survived four decades and a creative overhaul is not chasing the moment; it is simply outlasting it. The Loewe Flamenco’s particular softness of construction, the way its gathered leather settles rather than holds its shape rigidly, suits the XXL format well. It does not look strained at scale. Alongside it, Curated Indonesia bags were an oversized favourite at Copenhagen this season, bringing a different material sensibility to the same generous proportions.
The wider case for the format was made, rather brilliantly, by Dua Lipa, who took her XXL Chanel raffia tote through JFK airport last month. Airport dressing has its own harsh logic: the bag that cannot accommodate a jumper, a book, a laptop and whatever you panic-bought at the newsagent has already failed. The fact that the oversized tote passed that test is, in practical terms, the most compelling argument for it.
XXL Bags Copenhagen Fashion Week Made Relevant Again
The broader context is what fashion has been quietly calling “maxxing”: the collective drift towards excess as aesthetic principle, manifest in volume, print, and whimsy as much as in the scale of an accessory. Where a smaller season might have produced a neat structured tote, this one produces a bag that could accommodate an overnight stay without apology.
The daydream of the carryall is that it holds everything. The reality of the carryall, as anyone who has scrabbled for an Oyster card at the bottom of one knows, is that capacity without discipline is its own kind of inconvenience. The trick, as ever, is restraint inside the bag even when the bag itself refuses to be restrained. Think of it as curated, not crammed. Mary Poppins is charming in theory; less so when you are holding up the barrier at Liverpool Street.
From suede to crocodile print, the materials this season are well-suited to the format: substantial enough to carry the scale, varied enough to work from a Saturday market to a Monday commute. The best of the current crop sits in that particular register where a bag is obviously large but not obviously trying. It has drape. It has weight. It does not require an explanation.
The Loewe Flamenco, with its 1984 origins and its Anderson-era reinvention, is perhaps the most instructive example of why this moment feels less like a trend and more like a return: the XXL bag has always existed, and the industry has simply decided, once again, to pay attention to it.
