Letting the cat out of the bag
Following trends is fine but not at the cost of being identified by your accessories
Fashion — hyperbolic beast that it is — loves to declare trends "dead". Only then can there be the immense pleasure of bringing them back. Maxis are dead and now they're back. Double denim is dead but lo and behold, it's back.
But if the vagaries of fashion magazines leave you dizzied, you can seek comfort from the fact that on one subject, at least, they are unanimous: the It bag is dead. Of course, you wouldn't know it from the way celebrities are still touting their Birkins and their Mulberry Alexas. But with their underdeveloped sense of self-worth, they need a £1,500 (Dh9,003) price tag to make it clear that they're a cut above the rest of us.
The real fashion elite, however, are eyeing up the It bag's unlikely successor: an orange plastic holdall dubbed The Market Bag. Created by designer Raf Simons for the Jil Sander spring/summer 2011 collection, the plain plastic shopper has none of the signature hardware — name plates, padlocks, keys or bells — normally associated with an It bag. For starters, it's not nearly expensive enough, costing a mere £90 (Dh540). Made from a see-through orangey-red acetate, it could almost be mistaken for a Sainsbury's carrier.
As pictures of the Market Bag did the rounds of the office recently, a murmur went up from the women. "It's ugly." Absolutely. But so are most It bags.
Back in the 1990s, when the term was first coined following explosive growth of the handbag market, I was given my first — and only — It bag by a boyfriend. It was one of the few classic beauties, a dark pink Chloe number, and the power of the thing blew me away. I would walk into parties with it dangling from my forearm and marvel at the fact that the bag was the focus of attention. But soon The Bag suddenly seemed embarrassing and incongruous. Where do you put the thing? Not on the floor or the grease-marked table — so unless you're in Moscow, where the bags are so expensive that mini-armchairs are provided to seat them in, you dangle it from your arm all night, like a gauche parent at a teenager's birthday party.
Increasingly, I began to leave The Bag at home, only finding it useful when I had to pretend to be someone else. It bags will be back but they're forever dead to me. There's something both insecure and demeaning about wanting to be identified and categorised by your clothing or accessories alone.
