NEW YORK — Fashion historians have long maintained that nothing is ever done just for the sake of style. They say hemlines represent the state of the economy, and colors — or lack thereof — reflect society’s overall mood.
A new book, “Carried Away: All About Bags,” contends handbags are no different. Based on an exhibition at France’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs and copublished by Hermès, the book includes essays and photographs chronicling handbags and their uses from the early 13th century through today.
“A bag is like a Xerox of yourself,” said the book’s editor, Farid Chenoune, sitting in the Hermès store on Madison Avenue. “That’s the purpose of the book and exhibition, to show how mankind puts things in a bag that are very important to them. Whether you are a woman, whether you are a working man or a religious man, every time a bag is full of very important things for your life and for your identity.”
It’s something to which any airport security worker can attest: The contents of a bag are quite revealing.
“In her bag is her identity,” Chenoune continued. “Her ID, her money. But there is also her beauty identity: her makeup, the lip color she always wears. You have the story of her relationship with her own body and her own face, and, in a way, what it is to be a woman. That’s why it’s always fascinating.”
Chenoune carries a nondescript messenger bag, “a working bag,” he said. Put to the test, its contents support that. “There’s notebooks for everyday notes,” he said. “But it depends on the day. No makeup,” he laughed, “I leave that at home.”
In honor of the book, the windows of Hermès’ Madison Avenue store are filled with tiny animated bags (which one onlooker accurately noted look like those talking M&Ms) as well as one 6-foot-tall leather Kelly bag made especially for the occasion. Perhaps not surprisingly, a few New Yorkers have called the store asking to buy it, but it’s being shipped to Hermès’ exhibition department in Paris in two weeks.
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Wanting a 6-foot Kelly may be taking the modern idea of the “It” bag a little too far, perhaps even to the end. Chenoune has a sense that there might be a change in the air.
“[The status bag] is still a wanted product, but I sense that something’s changing. The desire for it has to be renewed,” he said. “Accessories used to be the access to luxury. They were the first step [to a designer brand] for most women and for some women it ended there. But now with Zara and H&M, luxury is accessible even if it’s a copy. Women don’t care, they think it’s a trick, they think they’re very clever. Which means, in a way, maybe we don’t need as much as we did to have this symbol of status.”
Still, there are bags that have spanned decades of style and Hermès makes at least two of them: the Birkin and the Kelly. The brand’s a natural sponsor for a project like this.
“Hermès is good because they have got respect for the business and the tradition of craftsmanship,” he said. “They respect the object and the idea that it is not just a product.”
After working on the book for over a year and making countless rounds at cocktail parties, Chenoune admitted he’s a little tired of talking about handbags. Yet he eagerly flipped through more pages of “Carried Away” to point out some of his favorites. A Native American bag made from otter skin ranks at the top, though he is fascinated by hierogylphs, too, that picture men, women and their bags.
“Look,” he said, pointing to one that is little more than stick figures toting a triangle-shaped object. “It’s Fifth Avenue 500 years ago. They’re even slim.”