The History of Handbags

Like shoes, handbags and purses straddle the line between functional and decorative objects. Though many women consider them necessary containers for objects such as keys or money, the sheer diversity of available styles demonstrates that handbags are also a design object in their own right.

Handbags have as long and controversial a history as the ubiquitous high heel, and according to handbag historians they were used in a similar way – to show the status of the wearer.

In the fourteenth century, the richer and more powerful the person the more jewels and embroidery festooned the handbag. Not much has changed in the handbag world, then.

Over the centuries handbags have gone through many adaptations and fashions, but the word ‘handbag’ was only coined in the 1900′s. That decade also heralded the type of handbag we would recognize today – with bags getting increasingly smaller and the introduction of handbag fasteners, inner compartments and locks.

But that’s enough history. Nowadays, handbags are everywhere. Thousands of handbags of all imaginable styles and designs are on the market. Apparently, each kind has found its use in the wardrobe of every woman. And yet, with the overwhelming number of handbags that has emerged year after year and grabbed up by female consumers, there are still many, many more soon to invade women’s fashionable wardrobes. Moreover, designer handbags are proliferating. From a non-designer label to the outrageously priced designer handbags, from a simple and plain masterpiece to shiny and elegantly embroidered handbags, the fashion industry will never cease to crank out new handbags for the market.