The Conversation: Handbags at the ready | Comment is free | The Guardian

With the recession, fashion experts predicted the end of the eye-wateringly expensive statement handbag, but women today are still spending hundreds on a bag – and luxury fashion houses are booming. Why, asks Emine Saner. Fashion writer Justine Picardie explains the appeal of her little Chanel number, while writer Laurie Penny holds on to her rucksack.

Justine Picardie: The notion of the handbag as an object of desire probably came in the 1950s – Chanel's "2.55" bag [the fashion house's quilted bag with a chain strap], which was launched in 1955, and the Gucci bags that became symbolic of luxury and jetset travel. That continued and in the late 90s, you got the idea of an "It" bag. You don't have to be thin to buy a handbag, and I think that is one of the reasons women can become obsessed with shoes and handbags, because it doesn't matter what size you are. You don't have to fit into the hideous size zero.

Laurie Penny: It has become this obligation to have not only a bag, but a nice bag that goes with your outfit and is full of all the things you need. Whereas men's clothes have pockets to carry stuff around in, and that's much more freeing. You're not able to run with a handbag in the same way as you are with a rucksack, which is what I normally have. I remember talking to my sister when I was little and we decided there must be a conspiracy between people who make handbags and people who make clothes for women, whereby the clothes-makers agreed not to put pockets on anything so you'd have to buy a handbag. Clothes are incredibly powerful statements of who you are, particularly as a woman, and handbags are seen as almost totemic of womanhood. The idea of the It bag is the epitome of the commodity fetish.

JP: Part of that commodification of culture is the celebrity endorsement of a handbag. Celebrity and handbags goes all the way back to Grace Kelly and the Kelly bag, Jackie Kennedy and her bag.

LP: There was that trend a few years ago where you were meant to have these oversized bags that were meant to make you look thinner.

JP: I think there has been a shift in that the It bags were very much symbolic of what was going on in the boom before the bust. Post-September 2008, that obsession with an It bag is very unfashionable.

LP: In some ways, but in other ways these companies are still increasing their profits.

JP: On the tube on my way here, I was looking at the bags that everybody was carrying. It doesn't matter whether you're carrying a designer bag, or a beaten-up old army rucksack, people use them as statements about who they are. There are people carrying their fair-trade canvas bags, and that's a statement about what they believe in. Then there were teenagers with fake designer bags and that is part of their look. And then there are people who have a nylon bag or rucksack that is saying "I'm very practical, I don't have time to think about this irrelevant stuff" but they are, in that way, subtly and possibly unconsciously, still making a statement.

LP: It makes me sad that some people feel they have to spend all this money on things that are priced way beyond what their use-value is to make a statement about who they are. There's that thing people say, where you can tell what a woman is like by what's inside her handbag, rather than what's on the outside.

JP: People are fascinated by the Queen's handbag, or Thatcher's handbag. When I was researching my book, I went to the Churchill Archives Centre, and they also have Thatcher's archives, so while I was there, I asked to see the handbag. It's this very sturdy ... it's not a designer handbag, but it's a black, polished bag of the kind my grandmother would have carried. She "used" that bag – she would put it on the cabinet table to say "pay attention" and the phrase "handbagged" comes from Thatcher's handbag.

LP: I recently inherited one of my grandmother's handbags. It looks a bit like Thatcher's bag, which I found moving because my grandmother was a die-hard Thatcherite – she was buried wearing her "Thatcher In" badge. She wasn't very well off, and she had looked after it so carefully. The little mirror that came with it was still in one of the pockets wrapped up.

JP: I'm always interested in the stories of things we inherit, the fabric of the past that is woven into these objects. When my great-aunt died, I inherited these beautiful little beaded bags from the 1920s. She was from another generation and always seemed very old to me when I was a child, but these beautiful, fragile bags reminded me she was young once. She bought these bags, she loved them, she would have gone out dancing with them.

LP: My mum and I were shopping in second-hand shops and we found this plain, old black bag and in one of the pockets, wrapped up in a piece of tissue, was what looked like a wedding ring, and there was this mystery. But the idea of an It bag kind of erases some of that personalisation – it makes something quite personal into a point of anxiety.

JP: If you buy a handmade bag, whether it's a vintage Chanel from the 1950s or a new one, those bags are made by people who are treated incredibly well, earn good salaries, work in ateliers in France and Italy, and are proud of their craft. It's the antithesis of a bag mass-produced in a factory and then sold in vast numbers. I'm not saying people should buy designer handbags, but we should be aware of the cost of mass-market bags.

LP: But for most people the things that are advertised and drooled over in women's magazines – it's simply an impossible dream to own one. I find it fascinating that some people have to have this thing, even if it costs a month's salary, because that's what they cost for a lot of people, and that's what they spend on it. There is this massive misconception that consumer choice is the same as empowerment. The idea that the goal of a working woman's life and earning money is to be able to earn enough to afford this lovely bag. That's not an argument that you shouldn't have a nice handbag if that's what you really want. I've got enough friends who have lovely handbags I covet. But I think the idea of consumer choice and commodity fetish as an expression of identity needs to be unpacked, like a bag at the end of the day. One of the most fascinating things about consumerism at the moment is you're meant to buy all this stuff that expresses who you are as an individual but individualism, more and more, is homogenous.

Justine Picardie's book, Coco Chanel: the legend and the life is published by Harper Collins, £14.99.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk