The Venetia was actually first done years ago, before the Marc Jacobs bag craze. A friend of mine has a black one from then, which she actually got heavily discounted at the San Fransisco store. The handles are much shorter than the current Venetia, but I think that is the only major difference. I believe softgrey may be talking about the one from FW02, with the brass hardware (not pushlock, buckle), because that is what a lot of people refer to as the original, because that is when they first started getting big.
p.s. Why are we talking about MJ in a Chanel topic? did I miss something?