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BACKPACK PURSES
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Gay, Kathlyn. Body Marks: Tattooing, Piercing, and Scarification. Brookfield, CT: Millbrook Press, 2002. Graves, Bonnie B. Tattooing and Body Piercing. Mankato, MN: LifeMatters, 2000. Steele, Valerie. Fifty Years of Fashion: New Look to Now. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1997.
■ ■ ■ A woman carrying a small dog in a backpack purse. The backpack purse gained popularity in the 1990s for its stylishness as well as its practical qualities.
Reproduced by permission of © Pat Doyle/CORBIS.
Backpack Purses
For a time in the mid-1990s legions of women began carrying their necessities in small, stylish backpacks instead of purses. The accessory proved to be a popular and practical alternative to the handbag. The origin of the backpack as a fashion item is traced to Italian designer Miuccia Prada (c. 1949–), who had inherited her family’s successful Milan luggage firm, Fratelli Prada. With her new husband, purse manufacturer Patrizio Bertelli (1946–), Prada began introducing stylish new items, including a practical little backpack made from the nylon material that her grandfather’s company had long used to cover its newly made steamer trunks, large box-like suitcases used for travel by ship in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The backpacks, with a small, triangular silver “Prada” logo attached, began selling in department stores in the early 1980s, though the company was virtually unknown in the North American market at the time. A ready-to-wear line was launched in 1989, and Miuccia Prada’s elegant designs soon caught on with young, fashion-conscious women. The Prada backpack became a highly coveted status symbol around 1994,
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FASHION, COSTUME, AND CULTURE