Chanel Boy Bag Small — Pink Galuchat & Lambskin, 2013

Chanel stopped working with exotic skins in 2018. This one isn’t coming back.

Karl Lagerfeld introduced the Boy in 2011. It’s named after Arthur “Boy” Capel, the man Coco Chanel loved and never married. It was the first Chanel built to look borrowed rather than inherited. It’s square and stiff, with a heavy chain and a clasp shaped like a rifle bolt instead of the soft CC turn-lock. It’s the most masculine bag Chanel makes, and the one that gets reworked most often.

This one is the rare version. The flap is galuchat, the polished skin of a stingray. The material takes its name from Jean-Claude Galluchat, the 18th-century Parisian craftsman who made it fashionable at the court of Louis XV. The surface is a field of tiny natural beads, hard as enamel and almost impossible to scratch. The pale line down the centre is the ray’s spine, so no two flaps look the same. The body is soft pink lambskin with the Boy’s stacked, quilted edges, and the hardware is aged ruthenium. That darker finish stops the pink from going sweet.

In December 2018 Chanel stopped using exotic skins altogether: no more crocodile, lizard, snake or stingray. Every galuchat Boy that exists was made before then. A new small Boy in plain lambskin costs €6,200 at Chanel today. This one is exotic and in a colour you rarely see on resale.

It’s a small bag that holds more than it looks: phone, cardholder, keys, lipstick. Wear it on the shoulder with the chain doubled, or let it out to crossbody length. It works over a white shirt and jeans as well as with black tailoring.