Bags: there is a perfect size
This week’s news that the designer Simon Porte Jacquemus has “launched” a two-inch bag – on the Paris catwalks, no less – caused quite a stir on planet fashion. Did it mean there was still mileage in the micro bag trend, wondered the retailers (there has been talk of a gradual, inch by inch return to great sacks). Was it a satire on the ludicrously dinky proportions to which some bags have shrunk? Or just a publicity stunt?
A week earlier, in Milan, I’d attended a preview of the Dolce & Gabbana collection where the designers chucklingly showed us a bag that while positively bloated next to the Jacquemus – a full three inches long – still wasn’t what you might call practical. “What can you fit in it?” I asked, waving my phone. My phone is my red line as far as bags are concerned. The latter can be as adorable and exquisitely designed as they like, but if my phone doesn’t fit in them, they’re staying on the shelf. “Nothing,” laughed Stefano Gabbana. “Absolutely nothing.”
Enter the conceptual bag, which is really more jewellery than anything so banal as useful. The Dolce reticule is at least gold, with a chain long enough to be slung over the body as a
kind of necklace with a phial dangling off it. Put like that, it has a function.
Jacquemus’s Mini Chiquito (a long name for a short bag), not so much. Its handles are so short they can only be dangled off a finger. Maybe we’re moving towards zero bag. Hannah Rochell, writing about this on Wednesday, explained she often goes out bagless, using just pockets. She is, she said, part (chylak.com)
of the minimalist movement. Others, like Carine Roitfeld, have eschewed bags for years because “they spoil the line of your outfit”. I get it. But the right bag can finish an outfit.
Like Hannah, I’ve pared back what I put in mine: no purse (I pay with my phone) and one of those tiny clear make-up pouches from Muji. But then there are my keys and office pass. Bulky. In winter: gloves. Dispersing these into pockets leads to chaos. Having a bag I can sling across my body, wear day and night with a pocket so I can get to my phone, far from being a symbol of feminine excess, is actually liberating. And the perfect size? 6.3 x 9.4 x 3 inches, which happens to be the dimensions of the Chanel 2.55. Empirically perfect.