Cao Thi Ngoc Khanh MEP Issuu

NEW COLLECTION 2020

Who created the first handbag?

When was the first handbag made?

THE HISTORY OF THE HANDBAG What you wear is how you present yourself to the World

Kendrea Cao

Our Mission Our mission is to educate, and inspire future generations about the experiences and contributions of women by collecting, preserving, and interpreting the evidence of that experience.

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ags are not a new invention, as long as humans have had items to carry, we have created bags in which to carry them. As early as 38,000 BCE, hunter-gatherer, humans were using bundles and pouches made from fibers to store and transport food and tools. The drawstring purse was worn dangling from a belt by both men and women from at least the time of Ancient Rome to the Renaissance and beyond. The woman’s handbag as we know it, however, is a much more recent development in the long, humble history of the bag.

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It’s fun to think about how fashion, and what is considered modest and decent through the years.

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Content

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of HANDBAG

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rior to the invention of the handbag, women carried necessities in pockets. But, unlike men’s pockets, which were part of a man’s garment, a woman’s pockets were an entirely separate garment, worn tied around the waist under her skirts. The large volume of women’s skirts made it easy to hide the bulk of pockets. This changed in the last decade of the eighteenth century, however, as high-waisted gowns gained popularity.

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ecause of the slimmer silhouette of the new style gowns, it became a grave fashion faux pas to wear bulky pockets beneath one’s gown. Pocket-lines were the panty-lines of the 1790s and no fashion-forward woman would be caught sporting them. With the death of women’s pockets, came the birth of the women’s bag.

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he precursor to the modern handbag was the reticule or the indispensable, as it was sometimes called. The reticule was a small bag, only large enough to carry rouge, powder, a fan, perfume, and a few visiting cards, but women quickly took to carrying them whenever they went out. Not everyone viewed the indispensable as quite so indispensable, however.

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Early modern Europeans wore purses for one sole purpose: to carry coins. Purses were made of soft fabric or leather and were worn by “I’M VERY ORGANIZED THESE men as often as DAYS, AND I KEEP MY LIFE IN MY ladies; the Scottish sporran is a survival HANDBAG, LIKE MOST WOMEN.” of this custom. In the 17th century, Britt Ekland young girls were taught embroidery as a necessary skill in part due to the increase in travel for marriage; this also helped them by railway. In 1841 the Doncaster make very beautiful handbags. industrialist and confectionery By the late 18th century, fashions entrepreneur Samuel Parkinson in Europe were moving towards a (of butterscotch fame) ordered a slender shape for these accessories, set of travelling cases and trunks inspired by the silhouettes of and insisted on a travelling case or Ancient Greece and Rome. Women bag for his wife’s particulars after wanted purses that would not be noticing that her purse was too bulky or untidy in appearance, so small and made from material that reticules were designed. Reticules would not withstand the journey. were made of fine fabrics like He stipulated that he wanted various silk and velvet, carried with wrist handbags for his wife, varying in straps. First becoming popular size for different occasions and in France, they crossed over into asked that they be made from the Britain, where they became known same leather that was being used for as “indispensables.” Men, however, his cases and trunks to distinguish did not adopt the trend. They used them from the then-familiar purses and pockets, which became carpetbag and other travellers’ popular in men’s trousers. cloth bags used by members of the popular classes. H. J. Cave (London) The modern purse, clutch, pouch obliged and produced the first or handbag came about in England modern set of luxury handbags, as during the Industrial Revolution, we would recognize them today, including a clutch and a tote (named as ‘ladies travelling case’). These are now on display in the Museum of Bags and Purses in Amsterdam. [citation needed] H. J. Cave did continue to sell and advertise the handbags, but many critics said that women did not need them and that bags of such size and heavy material would ‘break the backs of ladies.’ H. J. Cave ceased to promote the bags after 1865, concentrating on trunks instead, although they continued to make the odd handbag for royalty, celebrities or to celebrate

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T R E N D S

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rgu Ha These early handbags were also daring, one of the first examples of underwear as outerwear and thus for many a rather absurd affectation. The idea of a woman parading her personal belongings in a visible pocket was an act akin to lifting up her skirts and publicly revealing her underwear.

Early American feminists, in particular, fought the loss of pockets for women.

They believed handbags would never be as practical as pockets and advocated for functional pockets built into women’s garments like pockets were for men. For these women, pockets for men and handbags for women became symbolic of the inequality between the sexes and the struggle for women’s equal rights, much in the way later feminists would view the bra.

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ument Against the andbag T

he verb “to handbag” and its humorous usage was inspired in the 1980s by UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher having “weaponized” the handbag in the opinion of British biographer and historian David Cannadine.

As “her most visible symbol of her power to command” the bag became an emphatic prop that she produced at meetings to show she meant business. She would invariably bring out of the bag a crucial document from which she would quote, her speech notes often being cut to size to fit inside. Because Thatcher was Britain’s first female prime minister, former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore wrote in his authorised biography of 2013, “her handbag became the sceptre of her rule”.

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he verb’s more general meaning of “treating ruthlessly” came to symbolize Thatcher’s whole style of government. Victims of her handbaggings, from political leaders to journalists, have testified to what the German chancellor Helmut Kohl perceived as her “ice-cold pursuit of her interests”. US secretary of state James Baker recalled her standby ploy: “When negotiations stall, get out the handbag! The solution is always there.”

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ulian Critchley, one of her biggest Tory backbench critics, once said, “Margaret Thatcher and her handbag is the same as Winston Churchill and his cigar.”

Thatcher’s bag was almost as newsworthy an item as she was herself and on the day she died, one of her handbag-makers saw a sharp rise in sales of her favorite structured design. The original bag Thatcher asserts on a signed card was the one “used every day in my time at Downing Street” is archived at Churchill College, Cambridge.

Made of dark blue leather “in mockcroc style”, it was a gift from friends on her birthday in 1984.

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B R I N G

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B A C K

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S P R I N G

orm and unction of the Handbag

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ith the rise of the department store as a respectable location for women to meet outside of their homes, it became possible for them to stay away from home for much longer than they could previously. With this newfound freedom came the need to carry more than what would fit in an impractically small reticule.

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t the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, much more functional bags began to replace the reticule. Made by luggage creators like Louis Vuitton, these utilitarian bags, the first actually to be called “hand-bags,” were essentially miniature suitcases. They featured sturdy handles, multiple internal compartments, and a snap closure.

These changes in the bag itself also marked a change in the idea of a woman’s handbag- it became something entirely her own. As noted

by Anna Johnson in Handbags: The Power of the Purse:

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nlike a flimsy mesh reticule or a decorative coin purse sealed by a string, this bag snapped shut, and for the first time, women could carry their things with some degree of privacy.

Men, who had long carried a lady’s fan or her money, were supplanted by increasingly practical, brilliantly structured bags, and they have been mystified and excluded by the handbag ever since.

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n the post-World War I era, a woman’s role in society was rapidly changing, as women won liberties previously denied to them, including the right to vote. As the decade turned and they strode boldly into the Roaring Twenties and then the future beyond, greater changes were on the horizon for women and for the bags they carried along with them.

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The F utu T

he handbag’s past may not be long, only a recent few hundred years out of many millennia, but the history of the handbag is the history of women: women’s changing tastes, priorities, and roles in society.

Handbags have thrived in times of excess and survived in times of scarcity, and even defied repeated calls by feminists to replace them with pockets.

We cannot divine the future of the woman’s handbag. But, if its past is any indicator, we can be sure the handbag of the future will reflect the values of the woman of the future.

I love accessories.

I’m a girl.

I love handbags.

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ure of the H andbag

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