Tiny purses promise big rewards for husbands
A model displays a ridiculously small handbag from designer Jacquemus.
Small purses are a big trend these days.
How small? Break out the magnifying glass and take a squint at what French designer Jacquemus showcased with psycho glee during Paris Fashion Week.
This thing is 2x4, as in inches. It makes an evening clutch look like a laptop bag. My daughters have dolls that came with larger accessories.
So unless a woman only needs to transport three Tic Tacs and the cap from her ChapStick, this suede “Le Chiquito” deserves an F for practicality.
But as a married man, I give it an A+ for it’s about time.
Until Jacquemus pushed this “micro bag” trend to the Lilliputian cosplay extreme, women never had to make hard decisions about what they put in their handbags. So what they put in their handbags was anything and everything.
The other night, my wife asked me to fish her car keys out of her purse. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack in a corn maze in a parallel universe governed by no rules of matter. The deeper I dug, the more new stuff magically appeared.
This woman is sashaying around town with a stylish black hole slung over her shoulder. There were dry cleaning receipts from when Chrétien was in office and wet naps harder than steel. There were potions and lotions, cards and shards, lipsticks and, I’m pretty sure, a dipstick.
My God, I thought, is that a cordless vacuum? Why does she have an emergency flare?
Is that a Billy bookcase over there near the juniper tree?
I was shoving eyeliner to the left and Advil to the right and moving disgusting half-eaten granola bars and peering inside compacts and trying to keep it together as things were beeping and scurrying and flashing and my fingers went numb exploring this boundless, terrifying museum of her adult life.
I was not rummaging through a handbag. I was crossing a portal into her soul. But since there was no time to organize a search team with bloodhounds — that way, we could all climb into her purse with flashlights and cry out for the keys — I gave up. Now I understand why women take so long when they use a public restroom: they can’t find anything. Now I get why my wife gets backaches. The next time we’re out and she asks me to watch her purse for a second, I’m going to say: “Honey, take a look around. Do you see the Rock here? Because he’s the only one strong enough to dash off with that monstrosity.”
And this is why every man should buy a micro bag for the woman in his life.
Sure, 600 bucks seems like a lot of dough for a sack not big enough to hold a nickel. And, yes, the hands of our beloved may seem disturbingly large this spring when, after a night at the theatre, we have nightmares in which they are clutching and juddering our bodies in their Godzilla paws, lifting us up and turning us upside down like miniature saltshakers.
But just think about all the time we’ll
save when the women we cherish are not saddled with the inventories of a Shoppers Drug Mart and Staples. Think about how these tiny purses will force them to be as judicious with their portable belongings as we’ve always been.
“But I don’t have room for anything,” our wives will say.
“Only bring things that spark joy,” we will reply, quoting Marie Kondo.
I haven’t been this excited since they invented a blanket with sleeves and the thermostat requests I was forced to comply with dropped by half.
If this tiny purse trend takes off, perhaps designers can conquer other minimalist or decluttering realms. You mean to tell me we have artificial intelligence but scientists can’t make “chameleon heels” that change colour to match any outfit? If my wife only needed one pair of smart shoes, there’d be room around here for my old CD collection, which apparently, there is not.
You know what else I’d love to buy my wife? Self-washing children’s clothes. Nylons that never run. Earrings that whisper: You forgot your coffee in the microwave. Automated gloves that can make school lunches when I forget. A turtleneck with shoulder pads that massage. A robe that adjusts the TV volume telepathically. A skirt that violently flutters when it detects I’m not paying attention. But for now, these ridiculous bags are a welcome start.
It’s about time women were liberated from the burden of toting around a billion artifacts they don’t need. It’s about time they thought long and hard about what leaves the house with them and what stays behind. Why, a purse this small is like not having a purse at all.
This isn’t a fashion trend. To any man who’s desperately tried to find something inside the endless, swirling chaos that is a wife’s purse, it is a revolution. And the joy will be supersized.