Obsessed With Designer Bags!

Jiawa Liu of @beigerenegade waxes lyrical about our obsession with designer bags.

So the story goes that on a flight from Paris to London, Jane Birkin tried to stow her straw bag in the overhead compartment when her belongings started falling out. This led to the design of her namesake handbag that became the ultimate status symbol. Decades before, a photograph of Grace Kelly holding a large handbag to her body was famously revealed to be concealing her pregnancy from the media. In the ’80s, when negotiations became gridlocked, the late UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously slammed her handbag on the table, producing from it the very document that silenced her opponents. Thus cemented the reputation of the handbag from an essentials holder to a power broker and a weapon of mass concealment.

These days, the astronomical prices we’re willing to pay for them, and our feverish enthusiasm for the new styles of each season (despite how many we already own) goes against all logic and rationale. But this handbag obsession of ours is not as frivolous as many believe. Let me start from the beginning.