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A story in motion

Over time, this energy expanded from product to communication, from travel to retail, from art to technology, from the city to the archive. A bag is never just a bag: it is a functional object that becomes a language.
Since then, every collection, every campaign and every retail space has expressed the same instinct: to move differently. To cross cities, airports, offices, journeys, cultural shifts and new lifestyles with objects designed to last, adapt and surprise.
The name of the brand is inspired by the mandarin duck: a colorful migratory bird, water-resistant and known as a faithful travel companion. A perfect metaphor for a brand that, from day one, chose to speak about movement, color, function and the desire to discover.
This is the story of Mandarina Duck.

1977 - The birth of Utility and the color revolution

Utility was born, and the world of leather goods changed direction.
Practical, effortless and informal, Utility broke with the traditional idea of the bag. In a market dominated by classic, formal and almost monochrome products, Mandarina Duck introduced a new grammar: technical materials, lightness, resistance, water repellency and a range of colors that was immediately recognizable.
The rubberized material, unmistakable to the touch, became one of the brand’s first distinctive signs. The bag was no longer only an elegant accessory, but a useful, everyday, dynamic object. It could accompany work, leisure, school, travel and the city.
With Utility, Mandarina Duck changed perspective: the bag became a personal and everyday object, designed to move with the person who wears it, adapt to different contexts and express an idea of freedom, function and discovery.
Utility became the brand’s first manifesto, opening the way to the ideas that would define Mandarina Duck in the years to come.

1979 - Unbeatable Bags

The first campaigns told the story of Mandarina Duck with a direct, ironic and memorable language. Bags became “unbeatable”: resistant, soft, light and ready for anything.
In an archive filled with strong headlines and illustrations, the bag is presented as a small, intelligent invention: practical, comfortable and designed for everyday life, yet always unexpected.
Messages such as “Mandarina is comfortable”, “Mandarina is strong” and “Mandarina is with you, every day” translated product qualities into a clear attitude.
The product is never described only for what it contains, but for what it allows people to do: cross the city, take a plane, face the unexpected, and carry their own world with them.

1981 - Tank: protection becomes design

At the beginning of the Eighties, Mandarina Duck continued to ask a very concrete question: how can a bag become more resistant, more practical and closer to real life?
The answer was Tank.
The name evokes the solidity of an armored vehicle, but the product translates that strength into a new form: semi-rigid, protective, functional and unconventional. Rubber profiles protect the product from impact, while the ribbed surface becomes a strong, almost architectural design sign.
Tank combines robustness and softness, technique and style, protection and color. It is a line designed to move without fear, accompanying travel, work and everyday life with the security of an object built to last. With Tank, Mandarina Duck proved that functionality can have character, and that resistance can become design.

1984 - A hot-air balloon over Bologna

In the mid-Eighties, Mandarina Duck took its imagination beyond the advertising page and turned it into an event.
In 1984, a Mandarina Duck hot-air balloon flew over Bologna, becoming an urban, spectacular and popular episode. Articles from the time describe the flight above Piazza Maggiore and the public’s enthusiasm, especially among children: travel, from a communication theme, became a shared experience.
It was an important step. The brand no longer communicated only through products or print campaigns; it entered the public space. The city became a stage, the logo moved through the sky, and the Mandarina Duck imaginary world became physical and memorable.
The hot-air balloon became the perfect symbol of the brand’s spirit in those years: curious, colorful, light, free and larger than life. While the world spoke of performance and speed, Mandarina Duck chose a more poetic and surprising way to travel.
For Mandarina Duck, travel has never been only a destination. It is a different way of moving and seeing the world.

1984 - Sistema: revealing whatothers keep hidden

With Sistema, Mandarina Duck introduced a new intuition: making the structure visible.
In a bag, what supports, organizes and protects is usually hidden. Sistema does the opposite. Functional elements, technical details, steel spirals and transparent tubes become part of the product’s aesthetic.
It is an audacious, almost provocative choice. Function is not disguised; it is declared. Construction becomes language. The product reveals its intelligence and transforms the accessory into an object to be observed as well as used.
Sistema expresses one of Mandarina Duck’s strongest talents: the ability to transform technique into imagination.

1985- “Please, no check-in"

In the Eighties, Mandarina Duck strengthened its connection with aviation and international mobility. In the archive materials linked to the Pan Am experience, air travel becomes the ideal setting for a new generation of bags: light, practical, organized and designed to simplify every journey.
The tone is ironic, illustrated and almost cinematic: oversized bags, miniature characters, check-in counters transformed into theatrical scenes, and hot-air balloons landing in city squares.
Mandarina Duck does not simply promise an accessory. It proposes a smarter way to travel: more fluid, more functional and less complicated.
The headlines of the time say it with immediacy: “Mandarina will never make you miss a trip.” “On the contrary, it will make departure procedures easier.”
Among check-ins, airports, departures and distant cities, the product enters a modern international imaginary. The bag becomes a travel companion, an ally of movement, an everyday tool for those who cross the world with practicality and lightness.

1987 - Alphaduck: business loses its rigidity

In 1987, Alphaduck was born: Mandarina Duck’s business line.
The world of work was changing. People were traveling more, moving between cities, offices and airports, and looking for objects that could be elegant without becoming rigid. Alphaduck responded to this transformation with an essential, compact and sophisticated design.
The lines become cleaner. Details are reduced to the essential. The practicality of synthetic materials meets the elegance of leather. Almost like a hidden signature, a small metal duck appears: a discreet, ironic detail that softens the seriousness of the business bag.
With Alphaduck, Mandarina Duck brought its language into the business world: functional, precise and never predictable.

1988 - Hera: elegance finds a new balance

In 1988, Mandarina Duck introduced Hera, the brand’s first leather line, designed to interpret elegance in a contemporary and timeless way.
The lines are classic and rigorous, yet softened by Mandarina Duck’s functional and innovative eye. The satin-steel closure becomes the collection’s distinctive detail, while the snap-handle structure integrates into the shape until it almost disappears when not in use.
With Hera, Mandarina Duck proved that leather, too, could step outside traditional codes and become essential, practical and naturally contemporary.

1989 - Nudes: the product takes center stage

At the end of the Eighties, Mandarina Duck pushed its visual language even further with a campaign that was provocative, essential and highly impactful.
In Nudes, the body enters the image, but it never becomes the only protagonist. The bags cover, define and build the composition, becoming the true focal point of the campaign. Male and female bodies are treated with the same gaze: not as decoration, but as narrative surfaces that give scale, strength and balance to the product.
The provocation remains controlled by deep elegance. Saturated colors, sharp contrasts and clean compositions highlight the shapes of bags and leather goods, confirming the brand’s attitude toward the image as a space for experimentation.
With Nudes, Mandarina Duck does not simply show a collection. It builds a point of view: bold, contemporary and deeply recognizable.

1990 - MD20: the many forms of freedom

As the countdown to the year 2000 began, Mandarina Duck created MD20: a chameleonic line designed for a new desire to transform continuously, free from conditioning, fixed schemes and imposed models.
MD20 adapts to different lifestyles through versatile shapes and expresses its transforming spirit through the extraordinary iridescent effect of its fabric. It combines intelligent use of space with meticulous attention to detail, including the ultra-light handles that still inspire some of the brand’s current designs.
Today, MD20 is one of Mandarina Duck’s most iconic lines. It marks a bridge between present and future: the best-loved classics are reimagined through new combinations, designs and colors, enhancing their style and versatility.
Patterns have also become part of the line’s evolution, with geometric motifs creating a playful and original language in true Mandarina Duck style.

1994 - Formula 1: design at full speed

In 1994, Mandarina Duck entered the world of Formula 1 as sponsor of the Footwork Arrows team, with references to the F.1 World Championship and Gianni Morbidelli.
It was the meeting of two worlds founded on movement, technology and performance. On one side, the extreme speed of the track; on the other, the research into materials, forms and functional solutions that has always defined the brand.
Formula 1 became a new space of expression for Mandarina Duck: an international, competitive and technical arena in which to bring its visual language and its idea of design.
Not only travel. Acceleration. Not only function. Performance.

1995 - The invisible window

In 1995, Mandarina Duck rethought the very way in which a product could be presented.
The store did not want to be only a window. It wanted to become a story. Images took the lead, moving across mobile panels like stage wings. Products remained on continuous shelves, suspended within a space where light, materials and images built the experience.
It was a forward-looking idea for its time: the store not as a simple place of sale, but as a narrative environment. The product was not only displayed; it was placed inside a story.
Mandarina Duck anticipated an idea that is now central to retail: the store as an immersive, cultural and experiential space.

1995 - Mood: bags begin to fly

With the Mood campaign, Mandarina Duck transported the public into a suspended world. Bags appeared in unexpected landscapes: scarlet skies, seabeds, wheat fields. They were not simply photographed. They floated, traveled and occupied spaces both real and imaginary.
Color became a vehicle for escape. The product became a poetic presence. Communication moved away from descriptive language and built a recognizable visual universe, capable of inspiring dreams without losing concreteness.
Mood perfectly expresses the way Mandarina Duck interprets travel: not only as physical movement, but as mental openness.

1998 - Year 2037: the future, imagined with irony

At the end of the Nineties, Mandarina Duck looked ahead and created one of its most visionary campaigns: Year 2037.
The future imagined by the brand is not apocalyptic, cold or dominated by technology. It is human, surprising and sometimes paradoxical: a future in which the rules of society, politics, sport, travel and relationships have changed. A Black woman becomes President of the United States, ice hockey play-offs take place in Nairobi, and a family gathers in Baghdad to eat hamburgers, while airports, institutions and everyday habits are imagined through unexpected scenarios.
With this campaign, Mandarina Duck used the future to speak about the present. It did so with its most recognizable tone: ironic, intelligent, visionary, yet never detached from reality. The world changes, people change, ways of living and traveling change. Mandarina Duck objects remain companions of that movement: functional, durable, adaptable and designed to cross time without losing relevance.
Year 2037 expresses one of the brand’s strongest insights: travel is not only through space, but also through time, ideas and cultural change.

2000 - Search for Art & Mandarina Duck Award

In 2000, Mandarina Duck expanded its vision into contemporary art with Search for Art and the Mandarina Duck Award. Set in Milan’s Bovisa district, the project transformed former industrial spaces into a platform for emerging artists, international curators and new visual languages. More than a cultural initiative, Search for Art reflected the brand’s identity: regenerating spaces, connecting ideas and encouraging experimentation. Guided by the invitation to “Be visionary, ironic and banal,” the project embodied movement, creativity and unconventional thinking. With Search for Art, Mandarina Duck turned culture into a natural extension of its DNA. Travel was no longer only physical, but also creative, cultural and mental.

2000 - Paris Flagship: the store as an installation

At the beginning of the 2000s, Mandarina Duck brought its experimental approach to retail to Paris.
The flagship store designed with Droog and NL Architects broke away from the logic of a conventional, uniform layout. The store became a path made of tunnels, cocoons, unexpected displays, stairs and surfaces that changed the relationship between product and visitor.
Once again, Mandarina Duck treated retail as a language. The product was not simply displayed; it was placed within a scenography designed to generate curiosity and desire.
The store became part of the journey.

2001 - Murano Bag: technology meets poetry

With Murano Bag, designed by Marcel Wanders, Mandarina Duck experimented with a radical and poetic product.
The collection is inspired by Murano glassblowing and uses an innovative technology based on layered materials, heat, pressure and air. The bag takes shape as if it had been blown, transforming a technical process into an almost artisanal gesture.
Murano Bag perfectly expresses the way Mandarina Duck interprets innovation: not as a cold technical exercise, but as a sensitive, visual and narrative invention.
Industrial design, with an emotional soul.

2002-2004 - The lifestyle ecosystem: eyewear, watches and MINI

In the early 2000s, Mandarina Duck expanded its field of action and increasingly moved as a lifestyle brand. Online sources confirm agreements in eyewear with Visibilia and important results in the production of watches with Seiko.
In 2004, the brand also entered the world of MINI with a set of bags developed for the MINI Collection 2004/2005. The project included trolley bags, travel bags, laptop cases and backpacks, designed to integrate perfectly with the spirit of the MINI Cabrio.
Mandarina Duck did not limit itself to producing accessories. It entered into dialogue with other iconic objects of contemporary mobility. Cars, bags, eyewear and watches became part of a single idea of dynamic style.

2004 - Mandaring: modular retail

In 2004, Mandarina Duck developed a new retail concept called Mandaring.
The project worked with modular yellow elements, laminated rings that wrapped around the store interiors and created a recognizable, flexible and contemporary image.
Here again, color is not decoration. It is identity, orientation and visual memory.
Mandarina Duck yellow becomes architecture.

2006 - Sony VAIO: technology finds a new bag

In 2006, Mandarina Duck signed a collaboration with Sony VAIO Europe for a collection of laptop bags. It is one of the most interesting chapters to recover, because it connects the brand to digital mobility at a time when the laptop was becoming an everyday, personal tool.
The collection was created to transform the classic computer bag into a more contemporary accessory: nylon, leather, functional details, internal pockets for documents and stationery, room for notebooks and an aesthetic consistent with the VAIO world.
This passage feels highly relevant today. It shows Mandarina Duck as a brand capable of reading new habits around mobile work early on. Long before “urban commuting” became a common language, the brand had already identified the need to carry technology, documents and personal objects in one functional and recognizable solution.

2006-2007 - Y’s Mandarina: the encounter with Yohji Yamamoto

In 2006, Mandarina Duck signed an international collaboration with Yohji Yamamoto: Y’s Mandarina was born.
It was an important step, bringing the brand into direct dialogue with Japanese fashion and with one of the most influential figures in contemporary design.
The collaboration combined Mandarina Duck’s know-how in bags, travel and accessories with Yamamoto’s essential, conceptual and sophisticated language.
The lines presented were explored on models suspended between accessory and garment, function and silhouette, travel and fashion. It is one of the strongest moments in the brand’s international projection: Mandarina Duck is no longer only an Italian name in bags and luggage, but a platform for contamination between design, fashion and global culture.

2007 - The Alcatel Mandarina Duck phone

In 2007, Mandarina Duck also entered the world of mobile telephony with a co-branded Alcatel phone. At a time when fashion and technology were beginning to overlap with increasing force, the project brought the Mandarina Duck sign onto a personal, everyday object that was always in motion.
The phone was presented as a fashion handset, launched in bright colors and designed to stand out not only for function, but also for style. Today, the project appears almost pop, but it remains highly significant: it confirms the brand’s ability to cross categories while keeping a strong visual identity.
Mandarina Duck interpreted technology as an accessory, and the accessory as a form of personal expression.

2007-2008 - Asia, new markets and international retail

The brand’s international dimension strengthened during the 2000s. Online sources indicate a broad network of monobrand stores and expansion into non-European markets, with openings and distribution in Australia, Korea, Chile, Venezuela, Canada and Turkey, as well as growth plans including Sydney and Ankara.
In 2008, the brand’s entry into the Indian market was also reported with a first monobrand store in New Delhi, while Japanese sources described the 2007 opening of the first store dedicated to Mandarina Duck womenswear in Japan, in the Ebisu area.
This chapter is important because it shifts the story from “Italian brand” to “Italian brand with a global vocation”: an identity born in Bologna, grown in Europe, and capable of speaking to Asian and international consumers through color, function and design.

2008 - The London flagship by Marcel Wanders

In 2008, Mandarina Duck entrusted Marcel Wanders with the design of its London flagship store. The result was a theatrical and visionary retail space rooted in the story of Gulliver: a seven-meter yellow figure connected the two floors of the store, accompanied by a “breathing” mirrored wall and dozens of animated mannequins.
It is one of the most iconic moments in the brand’s retail history. The store became a living creature, an environment that breathes, an immersive experience capable of humanizing the product and transforming the act of shopping into a story.
The project has also been cited in retail design literature as an example of interiors capable of capturing the customer’s imagination.

2011 - A new bridge between Europe and Asia

In 2011, Mandarina Duck entered a new phase with its acquisition by the Korean group E-Land.
This step opened a new international chapter. On one hand, the brand preserved its Italian heritage; on the other, it connected to an Asian platform with strong retail and distribution expertise.
It was a moment of transformation: Mandarina Duck became even more clearly a bridge between Europe and Asia, between Italian heritage and new global markets.

2012 - Bologna Flagship: returning to the roots

In 2012, Mandarina Duck returned symbolically to its roots with the Bologna flagship store, near Piazza Galvani.
The project, curated by Atelier Mendini, enhanced the codes that had defined the brand during its first 35 years: color, modernity, function and joy.
After years of international expansion, Bologna once again became the place where the brand reaffirmed its origin. Not as nostalgia, but as an identity base from which to keep moving.

2013 - Logoduck+

In a world of suitcases with rigid shapes and formal color palettes, Mandarina Duck introduced LOGODUCK in 2013: a polycarbonate travel line with soft, rounded shapes and a compact volume.
Color, in all its shades, became the leitmotif, expressing a more fluid and informal way to travel. In 2018, a light revamp redefined some features of the suitcase, whose gentle lines evolved into the current LOGODUCK+.
In the post-pandemic period, the way people travel has evolved. Digital transformation, customized shopping experiences, sustainability and adaptation to new travel models have become key factors.
With its products, Mandarina Duck aims to offer authentic and genuine travel experiences, moving away from traditional tourist habits and embracing a functional, comfortable and lightweight way to travel.

2015 - Olimpia Zagnoli: color becomes language

In 2015, Mandarina Duck collaborated with Olimpia Zagnoli, one of the most recognizable Italian illustrators on the international scene. Her language, made of synthetic shapes, full colors and graphic irony, met the brand’s identity in a natural way.
Online sources describe a collaboration developed on LOGODUCK and Revival: faces, patterns, color and optical illusion transform the surface of bags and luggage into a narrative field.
It is an important step because it confirms a vocation already present in the history of Mandarina Duck: the product can become a visual support, an artistic surface, a functional object and an expressive one at the same time. The bag is not decorated. It is reinterpreted as a canvas.

2016 - Utility Regeneration: regenerating an icon

Almost forty years after its debut, Utility returned as a contemporary project that reactivated one of Mandarina Duck’s most iconic designs. Presented at Pitti Uomo 90 in 2016, the Utility Regeneration Project introduced five unisex reinterpretations of the original backpack, updated through new materials, colors and details under the creative direction of Denis Frison.The project soon evolved into a digital and editorial journey, with influencers documenting their travels across international destinations and events. Collaborations with Vogue Italia and 10 Corso Como further reinforced Utility’s relevance within fashion, publishing and urban culture.With Utility Regeneration, Mandarina Duck demonstrated that an archive can remain alive, transforming a historic icon into a symbol of contemporary movement.

2018 - Popsicle

“What do suitcases hide?”
With POPSICLE, Mandarina Duck decided to show it. The completely transparent hard shell reveals the inside of the product: soft, colorful modules in different shapes become part of the design itself, turning what is normally hidden into a visual element.
An unexpected approach that reinterprets travel through transparency, color and freedom of organization.

2019 - Imaginary Journey: Emiliano Ponzi and Mauro Seresini

In 2019, Mandarina Duck returned to the relationship between travel, illustration and retail with Imaginary Journey, a Spring-Summer 2019 capsule collection signed by Emiliano Ponzi.
The project came to life in the Via Fiori Chiari flagship store in Milan during Fuorisalone: the illustrator presented the capsule, while the imaginary world of travel was also translated into a sculpture by Mauro Seresini, a paper designer capable of turning paper into scenic and poetic objects.
The strength of the project lies in contamination: product, illustration, installation and retail space become parts of the same story. Travel is not only what the product allows people to do, but what the brand allows them to imagine.

2022 - 45 years: the archive starts moving again

In 2022, Mandarina Duck celebrated its 45th anniversary by returning to its archive, not as an exercise in nostalgia, but as an opportunity to reaffirm what has made the brand recognizable from the beginning: color, function, lightness, irony and the ability to evolve.
For the anniversary, the brand paid tribute to its history with a capsule dedicated to the backpack, one of the objects closest to the Mandarina Duck DNA. Simple, everyday and transversal, it speaks to travel, leisure and urban mobility.
The message is clear: Mandarina Duck heritage is not a static archive. It is living material, ready to be re-read, worn and carried into new lifestyles.

2024 - Mandarina Duck Gallery: the archive becomes an experience

In 2024, the Mandarina Duck Gallery project brought the archive back to the center of the retail space. In Verona, on Via Mazzini, the brand inaugurated a path that brings historic products, iconic campaigns and new collections into dialogue.
The store is not only a place of sale, but a narrative device: products, images, archive materials and installations build a bridge between past and present.
It is an important passage in the brand’s heritage story. Mandarina Duck does not simply display its memory. It stages it. Retail becomes experience, accessible archive and physical storytelling. It becomes a place where the public can cross the brand’s language, recognize its icons and rediscover the creative freedom that has accompanied it since 1977.
The same logic is echoed in the Mandarina Duck Gallery Project presented in Berlin, where the new ECO COATED line is narrated together with the brand’s history. It is a project that confirms Mandarina Duck’s ability to use space as storytelling: not only product, but identity, memory and contemporary vision.

2024-2026 - ECODUCK™: innovating responsibly

How many bottles does it take to create a bag?

With ECODUCK™, Mandarina Duck follows a more conscious path through recycled materials, functional design, and products created for contemporary mobility. Lines such as ECO COATED and Revival 2.0 reinterpret the brand’s historic values — color, practicality, multifunctionality and lightness — through a more conscious approach to materials.
At the same time, lines like Smart Duck place function at the center, offering organization, accessibility and technical solutions for commuting, travel and everyday movement.
For Mandarina Duck, sustainability does not become an abstract statement. It becomes a concrete solution: more conscious materials, resistant products and objects designed to last and accompany change.

2025 - VAIA: design as a tool for change

In 2025, Mandarina Duck met VAIA in a project that brings sustainability into a broader story of nature, design and responsibility.
The collaboration, launched during Milan Design Week and continued in the Foresta degli Innovatori in the Dolomites, is built around a shared vision: creativity can become a tool for positive change.
ECO COATED becomes the symbolic product of this direction, because it translates the connection between design, recycled materials and new environmental awareness into a concrete form.
For Mandarina Duck, it is a natural evolution. A brand that has always experimented with materials and functions continues to do so with a more contemporary eye: not only innovating to surprise, but innovating to generate value.

2025/26 - Sandokan: travel becomes adventure again

With Mandarina Duck x Sandokan, travel becomes story, imagination and adventure again.
The capsule dedicated to Salgari’s hero was created for the new series produced by Lux Vide in collaboration with Rai Fiction, reinterpreting LOGODUCK+ through graphics inspired by the tiger, the jungle, the ocean and the characters of the story.
The trolley becomes a visual passport: not only a functional object, but a narrative support able to carry an entire universe.
It is a collaboration perfectly aligned with Mandarina Duck’s history. Since the Eighties, the brand has told travel as discovery, play, freedom and the unexpected. Sandokan reactivates that same spirit in a contemporary key, bringing together pop culture, television, licensing and product.

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Paese/Area geografica

MANDARINA DUCK: UN VIAGGIO ITALIANO DAL 1977

Always on the move