Botkier - Handbags: A Love Story: Legendary Designs from Azzedine Alaïa to Yves Saint Laurent

CONTENTS

Judith Van den Hoek

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TO MISHA AND ROSA BOTKIER

I remember the first time I fell in love... with a bag. It was locked away inside a glass tower at Bergdorf Goodman on the main floor. I strolled through, as I usually do every time the seasons and the collections change, and noticed this buttery soft brown hobo with impeccable stitching, a confident slouch, and the most alluring antique-like horn handle attached by simple rings on each side. It was everything I wanted to be: sophisticated, well traveled, exotic. That bag represented all my dreams. I had to have it. The bag was Yves Saint Laurents Mombasa, designed by the sexiest of designers, Tom Ford. I went to visit it every day for a week until I finally convinced myself that buying it was more important than paying the rent.

Once I was the proud owner of my first designer bag, I began to notice how many other women had one. I also started to see bags for their color, size, condition, and brand. Designer bags had become my addiction, and I was inducted into a secret society that came with its own silent language spoken between members in knowing nods and glances of approvalin the streets, on the subway, at restaurants.

Men have various trophiescars, watchesand women have bags. Its true that bags are practicalthey protect our belongings and carry us through the daybut they also reveal taste, power, and status. A gorgeous bag signals to other women what tribe we belong to. Handbags, whether pristine and pricey or worn with character, project who we are and, more often, who we want to be.

After my initial purchase, I wound up adding several more beauties to my stable. I was seduced and enticed by material, stitching, hardware, construction, and silhouetteeven zipper teeth! The bags infused luxury into my daily routine, made my heart skip a beat every time I carried them. Often, a woman will catch my eye on the street because of her hair or her clothes or her beauty, but usually its because of her handbag. Where did she get it? I wonder. Followed by: I want it, I need it.

So, realizing that I had a problemI couldnt afford to plunk down four figures for each bag I wantedI decided to beat the system. As a fashion photographer who created her own portfolios, I had already begun experimenting with leathers and had a sizable collection of swatches. And in New York you can do anything if you are resourceful. So I designed my first bag, the Trigger, in 2003 and, using the Yellow Pages, found a local manufacturer to help make it.

Slouchy, with zipper accents and tasseled pulls, that bag embodied my downtown mood at the time. Priced at $595, it became a knockout. The formula seems so simple now, affordable luxury, but back then the handbag market was very clear-cutmass on one side, pricey on the other, and nothing in the middle. Now approachable luxury is a term we hear all the time in fashion and never think about twice, but to this day women still come up to me to tell me that their gateway to designer bags was a Trigger.

Trigger bag, Monica Botkier, Spring 2005.

Monica Botkier

As a handbag designer, Im always asked about the secret to making a hit bag. If only it were that simple. For starters, timing and being able to gauge the direction of the fashion current are important. In 2000, when Nicolas Ghesquire set about designing his first bag, the Lariat, for Balenciaga, he looked at what was out there and realized that all the bags were with logos and were stiff, very heavy and kind of structured, according to Womens Wear Daily in 2005. We thought, Why dont we do a very soft, supple and light bag that is kind of friendly and recognizable without a logo? Proenza Schoulers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez did the same for their PS1 satchel. It was very much about an It Bag, explained McCollough to Womens Wear Daily in 2013. Aesthetically those bags were very much covered in hardware and buckles and logos, and we kind of wanted to do something that was the antithesis... something more stripped down and incognito, easy wearing.

The celebrity factor is fashions not-so-secret secret. Mary-Kate Olsen helped ignite Alexander Wangs Rocco, while the tales of Princess Diana and Lady Dior or Jane Birkin and the Herms namesake have reached almost mythic status. The rise of tabloid culture, celebrity glossies, social media, blogs, and street-style photographers only amplifies the reach now. Ill confirm it for you here: designers do send the bags out early to editors and bold-faced names to add a little glamorous cachet early on.

Quality is a must, as is a distinguishing feature. Whether its allover logos and decorative frippery you can spot a mile away, a quiet yet distinctive silhouette, or a particularly alluring leather, there has to be something recognizable, a calling card that announces, or even whispers, that youre part of a designers inner circle.

Theres a certain balance that hits the eye when a handbag is really well designedits no different than successful architecture or interior design. It captivates and draws you in. Of course, theres a certain mystery involved, too. Trying to do an It Bag is like doing market research or studies, Marc Jacobs told W in 2005. You can try, but I think you just have to do your own thing. Ultimately, its the women who decide whether its It or its not.

What matters is exclusivity and supply versus demand. Its simply human nature to want what you cant have. Brands will cap the number of bags they produce each season to avoid oversaturation and stoke the appetite. I remember being advised to retire the Trigger. There are waiting listssome real, others manufacturedthat stir up the urgency to buy. The Herms wait list is legendaryup to six years, according to a 2015 Fortune report.

Handbags: A Love Story isnt a history of handbagsthere are plenty of great reads out there that trace the lineage, dating back to the 1790s, when women began wearing gauzy Empire dresses and the drawstring purses they previously tied to their waist went solo in the hands. This book is about the handbag as a modern phenomenon that exists in the swirl of desire, style, and aspiration as well as celebrity, marketing, and social-media cachet. Every bag featured here is a fashion and cultural happening, winnowed down from the past twenty-five or so years. But before eagle-eyed observers start quibbling about dates, the earlier styles, such as Chanels 2.55 from the 1950s, made the cut because theyre still wholly relevant and ever present.