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Handbags: The Power of the Purse. Know Your Gucci From Your Pucci – Anna Johnson

Handbags, The Bolide, The Birkin, Buckets and Baguettes. Moschino’s smiley-face bag and Judith Leiber’s vs Bohemian beads. The history of the handbag and the history of style. With over 900 full-colour photographs, Handbags is an extravagance of desire, secrecy, humour, fashion, craftsmanship, art, and exuberance.

‘Anna Johnson is the Dr Joyce Brothers of the purse world. Don’t even think about buying another bag until you have inhaled every clasp and clutch in this book’. Simon Doonan, The New York Observer. Source: Publisher

The terms purses and handbags

In the past, purses were bags used to carry coins. Throughout the English-speaking world, this term refers to a small money bag. Handbags are larger accessories that can hold items beyond currency, such as personal items.

Purse and handbag are typically used interchangeably in American English. Since the turn of the century, the use of handbags is a term of reference. The initial usage of the term was for men’s luggage.

Women’s bags became larger and more complicated during this time. Therefore, people started applying the term “bag” to the accessory.

An East Coast handbag, referred to as a “pocketbook,” was very popular among women during the mid-twentieth century.