pictures (in no order): the sartorialist, jak and jil, vanessa jackman, tfs, louis vuitton.
In fashion circles it seems like there are only three bags worth having. The first is Celine's itty bitty shoulder bag that comes with a hefty price tag. The second is Proenza Schouler's utilitarian dream boat - the PS1. And the third is Sofia Coppola for Louis Vuitton's satchel bag, part overnight-er, part chic tote, all class. It has that quintessential Sofia Coppola stamp of luxury and sophistication mixed with the french elegance of Louis Vuitton. It has a price tag well into the obscene - think $4500 US - but at the same time it has an allure that makes you consider, if you could just save up, if you could only forsake things like, ooh, a house, you could get one of these bags, and your life would be complete.
I am not a bag lady, not by any stretch of the word, but lately I've been thinking a lot about bags. Perhaps it is because I work in the handbags section of a big department store here in Australia. Or perhaps it's just that, after years of just shoving everything I need into my pockets, I've come to realise that bags really are an important part of finishing an outfit. I see girls on the street whose bags are an extension of their style, whose bags provide an interesting counterpoint to what they already wear - a woman came into work yesterday in a simple black duffle coat and a wicker basket and canvas bag by miu miu, she was a regular alexa chung. Is a bag necessary to complete an outfit? No, by any means. But it does add a little something extra. It's like in exams when they say you are not obliged to use secondary material and extra sources, but you get extra marks if you do. Your bare bones outfit is perfectly fine without a great bag, but with one, it becomes extraordinary.
Why do we love bags like Sofia Coppola's LV collaboration so much? I think it is because fashion is swinging against the extravagance and "look at me" nature of past seasons - those seasons when every LA starlet would swing a Balenciaga city from the crook of her elbow and those bags were being copied left right and centre by every chain store you can imagine. The interesting thing about the Sofia Coppola LV bags is that they are simple. Very simple. Unlike even the Celine and the PS1 bags they have really no distinctive characteristics other than their shape. They are just a bag. This makes them, by default, not interesting for copiers and fakers, who want the big ticket items like the Mulberry Alexa or the Chloe Paraty. This bag can slip under the radar so that, for those select few with the $4500 chump change, they can be something exclusive and unique. Without fakes flooding the market their value increases exponentially.
More than this, we are looking for simplicity. This can be seen in the success of designers like The Row, Joseph Altuzarra and Haider Ackerman, who take simple silhouettes and give them subtle twists - the fish-tailed evening gown, the belted kimono style over-shirt, the rope sandal - so that they are both familiar and unrecognisable at the same time. We want to revisit the heyday of our minimalism - the 90s - but we don't want to relive them. We want to infuse them without our more modern sensibilities, with our ipads and our grande cappucinos. We want a duffel bag that isn't really a duffel bag, that is lined in the softest suede, that has the two characteristic piping lines running down the middle, that slouches perfectly and moulds to the shape of the body, that can be at once both sporty and sleek. We want a bag that multi tasks - gone were the days when we had different bags for different outfits. The modern bag should be casual enough to work with jeans and yet elegant enough that when you sling it across a cocktail dress you look chic, not sloppy.
You can get all of this, I think, from the Celine bags, the Proenza Schouler PS1s, and from Sofia Coppola's LV duffel bags. All of these bags are the ones on constant rotation on Garance, The Sartorialist and Jak & Jil, and for good reason. The fashion world is enamoured. Who is to say in a few years what will happen to these bags if - like the chloe paddington, the fendi spy and the balenciaga city - they too will fade into oblivion? Who is to say what the trends will be in a few short years? People always talk about investment buys - but really things that are classic are subject to the tastes of those who compile those lists of classics. The army jacket will not always be a classic, but it is a current classic. When it comes to bags, buy it if you like it, you want it, and you'll wear it. Don't worry if, in 20 years, you think you'll never wear it again. To be honest, you probably won't wear anything you have now in 20 years.
Fashion editors are saying that this season has seen the "death" of the it bag. Well, if the street-style sites are anything to go by, the it bag is alive and well, it just has a new label.
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