I’m a fashion editor, so it won’t surprise you to learn that I care about handbags more than the average person. I could reel off the design specs of a Gucci Jackie bag or a Loewe Puzzle, and have already memorised the new styles en route for spring/summer 2024. I am very specific about how my handbags complete an outfit. But one thing I just don’t care about is how my bags look on the inside. I barely find the time to organise my inbox, let alone the inside pockets of every bag that’s on standby ahead of its next outing.
I see my handbags as a vessel for “stuff”, and, if I’m being really honest, as a useful extension of the (very limited) storage in my London flat. Whatever the handbag, I don’t want to be too precious about how I’m using it. I don’t meticulously empty a bag of my belongings each time I swap it for another, so every one that I own is lined with a light (sometimes not so light) covering of pound coins, biros, stray lipsticks and iPhone cables, along with receipts, used train tickets and folded up bits of paper.
Almost every time I reach for a handbag I have an, “Ohh, that’s where those headphones were” moment, or am reunited with a favourite lipstick I last used three months ago. Occasionally, it means I misplace my bin storage keys, and I’ve lost countless office door passes to the depths of a disorganised tote (I found one from a job I left two years ago in a forgotten clutch bag just this week – whoops). Sometimes there are nice surprises: yesterday it was a Pret Godfrey gingerbread man I’d bought four days earlier and forgotten about.
Fortunately for me and other women like me, my messy handbag habit was validated by the spring/summer 2024 shows, where for the first time in my memory totes were filled with actual stuff – the unglamorous accoutrements of everyday life. At Miu Miu the bags were overflowing with spare shoes and clothes, rolled up newspapers peeped from the top of Bottega Veneta’s oversized basket bags, and Balenciaga’s smart leather tote bags were laden down with keychains and trinkets.
The inspiration for this intentionally dishevelled styling? The late Jane Birkin, whose Hermès handbags were typically stuffed like a chaotic top drawer, overflowing with belongings, books and paperwork. Given the Birkin’s price tag, no owner could be blamed for treating theirs like a museum piece, but given that the style muse famously dreamed up the style with practicality in mind, it’s not surprising that hers was a bag she actually used. “There’s no fun in a bag if it’s not kicked around, so that it looks as if the cat’s been sitting on it – and it usually has,” she once told Vogue. “The cat may even be in it!” She didn’t want her bags “looking like everyone else’s”, so she also liked to embellish them with beads and stickers, in a similar fashion to the decoration seen in Balenciaga’s new collection.
Of course, the shift towards being less precious about accessories was happening long before Miu Miu sent its messy bags down the runway. The Olsen twins have also been schlepping scuffed luxury purses around for decades – Mary-Kate was famously photographed in the early Noughties with a giant red wine stain on her mint green Balenciaga bag. “It explains my life,” the star said of her love-worn handbag back in 2005.
