Fashion Notes: Handbags of Note

I've never been much of a handbag fan. I can enjoy them for their design, but I've never gone as far as drooling over It Bags (or, really, coveting any bag). There have only been a handful that have stopped me in my tracks while flipping through glossies. These few bags have exhibited a sense of color, whimsy, and eccentricity very close to my own and are the only bags I would ever spend top dollar on.

YSL MUSE TWO

This YSL bag ($999) caught my eye when it was released last year. This bag appeals to my sense of color. Through no real sense of design or intention, I usually buy accessories and electronics in colors I'm drawn to, resulting in almost exclusively red and bright blue peripherals. I love this muted cobalt, particularly as it's juxtaposed with the stormier blue-grey and beige. I am also fond of its more luxe, feminine interpretation of messenger bags. Overall, this is a very clever pastiche of the Birkin bag, boyish messenger bags, and every designer knock-off purse in the eighties.

CHLOE EDITH


The Edith bag embodies a lot of firsts for me - the first time I ever stopped and stared at a bag, the first time a bag ever captured my personality, the first time a bag played a larger part in an ad campaign's appeal to me than the clothes. Admittedly, a lot of the bag's allure comes from the underexposed, rumpled heap of Ediths captured in Chloe's S/S 2006 ad campaign. Something about the the imagery of a stack of luxury handbags soothed the obsessive-compulsive part of my mind that seeks order and symmetry. Ultimately, though, it was the haphazard quality to the bag that ultimately appealed to me so much - the weathered leather, the slightly-off brown color, the messenger influence, and the fact that the bag looked beaten up and abused, like something I'd carry. It is not a gorgeous bag, but it does personify that disheveled quality I have, thereby suiting me far more than all the Fendi baguettes in the world.

PROENZA SCHOULER PS1

In the interest of presenting something more recent, I've included the PS1 in this list. This bag carries out the messenger theme to its final conclusion, and as such, loses some of the earlier bags' suggestive whimsy. Despite that, the bag excels in the material sense, being offered in a variety of finishes and leathers. As always, I'm drawn to this storm blue, though I am also enamored with the python version. While not as much fun as the other two bags, it presents a more adult iteration of the messenger bags I exclusively carried in my teens and early twenties, and the texture keeps it interesting enough to elevate it from all the H&M/Coach/Burberry iterations.