Image of a Coach handbag
Spring's hot new handbags—and what your favorite purse reveals about you.
By Susan Caba
I’m ready for a spring purse. I need a little whimsy; the fall and winter purses were all belted and locked and snapped and zipped and chained—militaristic, almost. I started combing the handbag departments shortly after New Year’s Day, looking for something light.
Even though it was early, I found harbingers of warmer weather. At Neiman Marcus in Plaza Frontenac, the Kate Spade collection included wicker purses (as sure a sign of the coming season as Easter hats) in black and white, trimmed with leather and lined with eye-popping color ($195). The Kate Spade signature print this year is a Pucci-like extravaganza of swirling pink and melon. Sake Fifth Avenue had Juicy Couture’s slouchy little hobo bag in pink, draped with chains more reminiscent of a boyfriend’s ID bracelet than an instrument of bondage.
What makes the perfect purse, anyway? Style? Practicality? Maybe this is shallow obsessing, but—like glasses—your purse is out there every day, making a statement. Martha Stewart’handbag evoked scorn, even outrage, when she carried it during her securities-fraud trial. (The Birkin is the subject of a discussion thread on Purseblog.com: “You don’t want to spend $15,000 just because you like the look,” said one person. “You should actually use the bag.” Uh-huh.)
I’ve had just two purses that utterly pleased me. One was orange patent leather and matched my first “heels”—low slingbacks that I wore in the seventh grade on the one Friday a month we didn’t have to wear uniforms. I was channeling (unsuccessfully, I’m sure) Audrey Hepburn, icon of sophistication.
The other perfect purse was a zebra-striped silk Kate Spade from two years back—bold enough to turn heads, expensive enough ($295) to feel extravagant and quirky in a way that made me feel more myself, no matter what I was wearing.
Call it the psychology of purses.
A friend in dire financial straits was given a Coach envelope bag, made of the brand’s signature buttery leather. It’s a luxury she wouldn’t have purchased even when she could afford it, and it gives her a lift when there isn’t a nickel in her wallet. Another friend received a similar handbag and returned it—she didn’t want the responsibility of taking care of and keeping track of a $400 purse. Besides, she said, it was so big that anything she dropped in it would sink to the bottom, never to be seen again.
The Coach Store at Plaza Frontenac, by the way, is showing lighter colors for spring: suede hobo bags ($298) in rose blush or aquamarine, as well as its traditional bags, appliquéd with red leather poppies.
Embellishment—appliqué, crystals, fringe, even feathers—is still a hot look, says Susan Liuna, owner of Susan Lynn's in the Chesterfield Towne Centre. One of her most popular brands is My Flat in London, with purses featuring enough sparkle and details to stop foot traffic.
“We’re still seeing designers one-upping the season before,” she says. “We’re not going back to basics.”
Purse accessories are big. Everything from iPods (in matching cases, of course) to cell phones (ditto) to coin purses (you get the picture) hangs on the outside, along with decorative charms. Maybe we don’t need handbags, just belts with lots of loops.
Liuna carries a hot-pink suede bag with fringe by local designer Stacy Lynn (no relation). “It’s not a basic bag, but I’m not much of a purse-switcher. It goes with everything. I think of it as black-brown neutral,” Liuna says, adding that some of her customers change purses twice a day, others no more than two or three times a year.
Two women I know swear by the same essential purse (one purchased at the outlets in the Ozarks, the other by mail order). It’s clamshell-shaped, with a zipper all around, so the purse hinges open fully. (Louis Vuitton’s Alma purse, $795–$1,290, is similar.) It boasts many compartments inside, an outside cell phone pocket and handles long enough to loop over the shoulder. It may be functional, but it’s suited more to Queen Elizabeth than to Gwyneth Paltrow. (The queen, I’ve read, uses her purse to signal courtiers—“I need a bathroom break” if it’s on one arm, “Get rid of this bloke” if it’s on the other.)
Clearly the queen favors function over form. The handmade purses by Mary Frances ($120–$170) at The Empty Nest in Webster Groves, on the other hand, are meant for those who regard purses as jewelry. Each is a work of art, encrusted with bugle beads or embroidered with sequins or constructed of vintage silk and buttons. Moderately small and moderately delicate, they won’t hold much more than a cell phone, ID, credit cards and keys, but that’s enough for me. The problem with purse capacity is that, like highway capacity, if it exists, it will be used. There’s nothing I hate more than stirring up a blizzard of deposit slips, receipts, stray business cards and random notes when searching for my keys.
That hatred makes my current purse— constructed of vintage ’50s fabric, outrageously expensive ($225) and roomy enough to hold lunch, file folders, magazines and who knows what else—a curious choice. But when I saw it at The Designing Block in Clayton, I had to have it: With purses, as with love, there is no logic.
