SIZE: 7.87 inches in length, 12.20 inches in width, and 1.97 inches in depth Notes from the Curator This black nylon shoulder bag from Gucci's Tom Ford era represents the house's practice of cutting durable, non-luxury fabrics into a sharp silhouette, a strategy Ford deployed to bridge glamour and wearability during the 1990s. Ford served as creative director of the Italian fashion house from 1994 to 2004, and his minimalist handbag designs became status symbols for a generation drawn to sleek, sexy, and good quality pieces. The nylon bags of this period are characterized by blazing silver hardware and a structured shape that gives them an air of bullet-smooth polish, a deliberate contrast to the era's slouchy alternatives. Ford famously clashed with chairman Maurizio Gucci over whether the brand's imagery should be "round and brown" or "square and black"—a tension evident in this bag's clean geometry and monochrome palette, hallmarks of the creative direction that grew Gucci sales from $230 million in 1994 to nearly $3 billion by the early 2000s.