We live in times of financial crisis and recession, but sales of accessories and in particular of luxury bags are still very strong.
This would have already been a very good reason to open an entire museum dedicated to bags, but Kenny Park, founder and director of the Seoul-based Simone Handbag Museum, had actually very different aims and objectives when he decided to put together an ambitious archive of bags.
Park's main purpose was offering visitors and researchers the chance to discover the history of bags, analysing also the techniques involved in the making.
Yet, while the origins of society's fascination with bags may be intertwined with issues of desire, yearning, vanity, and seduction, even the most beautiful bags may lose their appeal and desirability when displayed trapped in a glass or plexiglass box in a museum. Park therefore turned to London-based curator Judith Clark to create a proper handbag museum, with dedicated cabinets and installations.
Handbags: The Making of a Museum (Yale University Press) is the result of the research behind the the Simone Handbag Museum.
Collecting started in 2010, and the museum - located in a very apt bag-shaped building (View this photo) designed by Korean architects UAD and Charlie Smith Design in Seoul's fashionable Sinsa-Dong district - opened last year.
The museum is arranged on the top three floors of the building (two for the permanent display and the smallest top floor for temporary exhibitions) and also includes a leather shop, subsidised studios for designers, spaces for craftspeople to perform demonstrations, a museum shop and cafè and two floors of retail spaces.
The book features not only beautiful images of the items in the permanent display, but also in-depth essays analysing bags, purses, wallets, vanity cases, clutches and designer bags from a historical and psychoanalytic point of view.
Claire Wilcox, Senior Curator of Fashion at London's Victoria and Albert Museum, penned the opening essay entitled "A History of Containment".
In this text Wilcox looks at early examples of bags, pockets and purses, moving from miniatures, portraits and manuscripts, analysing the leatherwork, weaving and embroidery techniques employed, examining the materials and alloys used for the frames, tracing a passion that also passes through literature with bags being mentioned in Chaucer, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy and Katherine Mansfield's works, just to mention a few.
The images of the collection start with a photograph of an Italian silk and metal thread purse knitted together in a knit stitch known as stockinette with edges finished with a purl stitch (dated around 1550).
This first purse is followed by many others: the book includes embroidered bags embellished with stones, pearls, silver and gold threads, featuring little scenes from a gentleman's life or characterised by a variety of multi-coloured geometric motifs.
There are a few examples of "pockets" - a sort of internal purse fashionable in the 18th century - but the most impressive thing is the variety of handbags, from the different periods of times and in the most disparate shapes - from lozenge to trapezoids, pineapples and urns.
The items in the book go from striking examples of "reticule" bags (satirised by cartoonists at the time as the "ridicule"), sweetmeat purses (for sweet smelling herbs and other scented items), miser's purses, chatelaines, leather work bags, vanity purses, "minaudières", clutches, wartime bags ideal to carry a gas mask and novelty bags to creations by famous houses and designers such as Cartier, Schiaparelli (there is a rather unusual leopard bag in the book that belonged to one of her most adventurous clients, Wallis Simpson), Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Fendi, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Moschino, Prada and many more.
Finding a favourite among the designs in the book is an extremely difficult task: the exquisite hand-finished details, the lovely shapes and excellent materials are testament to the high standards of craftsmanship employed to make each piece.
This is the main reason why, rather than being a guide to the museum or a surrogate for those of us who may not be able to go and visit in person the Simone Handbag Museum, the volume could be considered as a great asset for any reference library.
The bags are carefully analysed one by one, but curator Judith Clark also explains what inspired the installations with bespoke mannequins designed to offer a context for the bags. The dummies are indeed positioned in order to hold a bag and offer visitors the chance to ponder a bit about posture and silhouettes.
This topic is also tackled in an essay by Amy de la Haye that moves from Xavier Sager's illustrations of fashionable women carrying handbags.
Last but not least, the volume includes pictures of the original contents of some of the bags in the collection: readers will therefore be able to admire knitting implements, make up accessories, personal cards and even surgical instruments, elemets that help definying the historical period of a specific bag, but also its purpose and the kind of life led by its owner.
In a nutshell, Handbags is highly recommended to curators, researchers and fashion historians, but it should also be considered as a must in the personal library of any genuine bag addict.
Handbags: The Making of A Museum by Judith Clark is out now on Yale University Press.
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