In the know
They’re so much more than a way to carry possessions. Public on the outside, private on the inside, how our handbags look and what we put inside them tells the story not only of our own lives, but also of the women who came before us
Prehistory: the first coin carriers
The first bags were unisex, according to anthropologists who have studied early hunter-gatherers. It’s likely they were pieces of animal skin or plant fibre knotted together to carry tools as tribes kept on the move looking for food. When humans started farming and exchanging goods, it led to the invention of coins made of metals such as gold, silver and bronze, around 7BCE – and the first purses to carry them. Egyptian hieroglyphics and Ancient Greek and Roman pottery show men and gods carrying small bags – while the Bible has descriptions of the pouch that disciple Judas used to carry money.
Over the centuries, these bags became status symbols for wealthy people, who embellished them with embroidery or jewels. Only poorer people without servants carried large bags, for farming implements or the tools of their trade.
Renaissance to Regency: the birth of the fashionable bag
Until the 17th century, wealthy men and women attached bags to their waists to hold the objects they liked to keep with them, such as perfumes, seals to sign letters, dice or small books. But the growing popularity of pockets in men’s trousers and waistcoats meant the handbag began to be seen as an accessory for women. With pockets sewn only into male garments, women still needed containers for whatever they wanted to take with them, carried over or under their skirts.
It was the dramatic change in dress styles around the 1790s that led to the creation of the first fashionable handbag. The voluminous skirts worn by women for hundreds of years were replaced by more slimline, neoclassical styles to mimic Roman and Greek clothing. Soft cotton dresses with high empire-line waists now followed the silhouette of a woman’s body. This meant that bags could no longer be attached to a woman’s middle. So, instead, well-off women carried reticules – small sewn bags made of silk or velvet, which they dangled from cords on their wrists.
The early-Victorian era: bags are out
Fuller dresses came back into fashion in the 1850s, thanks to a French invention, the crinoline – steel hoops that supported skirts several feet wide. Reticules were replaced by chatelaines, chains worn around the waist, upon which Victorian housewives hung the small objects they needed to run their homes, f
