And the Winner is ...

Before Colette, before Ralph Lauren gave us lifestyle, brands invested in branding, or innovation was innovative, there was Vinçon, bringing us things we didn’t even know we wanted. Now this store specialized in housewears and gifts is almost as much of a landmark in Barcelona as that big rock pile next door and lots of us wait every year to be surprised and tickled by the new Christmas shopping bags. Of course some years are better than others.

That’s why we asked friends and relations to put in their two céntimos about their favourite bags. It wasn’t easy to tally – there have been 48 designs since they started the tradition in 1972 and they’re so good that the votes were all over the map (do the math and you’ll see that some years there were multiple options.)

As a year the overall winner was 2007. So many people loved the calendar and the sweet interpretations of a colander, a bird in a cage, a handbag, an umbrella. But those were different bags. So here are the individual winners:

1975 – the Vin Chong joke had lots of people chuckling.

2007 Calendar – America Sánchez, designer of the original and still-going-strong logo convinced many with the December calendar.

2001 – Pati Núñez, this year’s National Design Prize winner and one of the usual suspects when it comes to Vinçon bags, hit home with her tribute to the peseta as it was on it's way out of circulation. (Remember that they taped a peseta onto each packaged wrapped at the store. Did you wonder how much that cost? Do you think they got a discount since the item was about to become past season?)

Check out this year’s bag and the exhibit of historic shopping bags on the second floor at the store.

Vinçon:
Passeig de Gràcia, 96
tel 93 215 5037
m-sat 10h – 20:30h