The First is Kim Jones's 2021 sculpture, a soft clutch folded over a single oversized diagonal F that is simultaneously the frame, the hardware, and the logo. Its interest to this file is almost clinical: it is the cleanest era test in the Fendi records, because the model has existed only in the RFID years. There is no legitimate First with a hologram, no legitimate First with a bare vintage serial, no ambiguity at all.
That makes it the worked example for the doctrine the whole maison file teaches: the era system dates the markings, and the model files date the models, and a genuine bag is one where the two calendars agree. A First is 2021 or later by definition, so its markings have exactly one acceptable answer, and anything else is not an old First, it is a new fake.
A current bag with a short record: buy it complete, with its RFID pouch intact and chip present, and treat marking-era mismatches not as curiosities but as verdicts.
Fendi does not encode dates, but it brackets them: bags before 1980 carry no serial, the serial era runs 15 to 17 characters on leather with the first six naming the model and none of it naming a year, the hologram sticker era runs 2004 to 2010, and the sewn RFID pouch takes over from 2010, with 2015 the one changeover year where both markings can legitimately coexist. A hologram and an RFID pouch together in any other year is the classic fake tell, a pouch with no chip inside is another, and the era the markings claim must agree with the model's own documented birthday, which is what the serial era guide on this site checks in one step.
Model histories and date-code systems compiled from documented maison history, resale-industry authentication references, and period documentation, cross-checked across independent sources.