An essential part of the well dressed woman is her handbag. Here over 300 exquisite color photographs of handbags from the world's top fashion designers are brought together to vie for the attention of collectors, designers, and fashion gurus. See details of construction, designer logos, impeccable stitching, luxurious leathers and fabricated materials as components of high quality and high value luxury handbags in today's marketplace. Louis Vuitton, Judith Lieber, Fendi, Gucci, Chanel, Hermes, Roberta Di Camerino, Farragamo, Celine, Bottega Veneta, and more are all represented by many examples. Many designs are classics today, having survived competitive runway battles for a generation. Other designs are original, fresh, and challenging the classics for shelf space in boutiques and closets around the world. Read about some of the designers and savor the special handbags they carefully created. The designs are fun, elegant, and inspiring.
This comprehensive new book celebrates over 550 top quality handbags by leading and unknown designers the world over, dating from 1759 to 2004, with detailed information to describe their outstanding qualities. These carefully selected handbags are arranged by their primary materials and chronologically within each chapter, for easy reference and interesting comparisons. Here fine leather, fabric, metal, beaded, skin, and plastic handbags from all over Europe, England, Canada, The United States, and Asia appear in over 600 beautiful color photographs. Examples appear from the design houses of Adele Handbags, Asprey, Bergdorf Goodman, Bonnie Cashin for Coach, Cartier, Chanel, Coblentz, Collins of Texas, deLillo, Elizabeth Arden, Emilio Pucci, Fendi, Givenchy, Gucci, Halston, Hermes, I. Miller, Joret, Judith Lieber, Keiselstein-Cort, Llewellen, Mandalian, Mark Cross, Marvel, Nettie Rosenstein, Patricia of Miami, Pierre Cardin, Raoul Calabro, Rialto, Roger Van S., Ronay, Rosenfeld, sydney love, Tiffany, Tropic, Tyrolean, Virginia Merrill, Viva, Whiting & Davis Co., Wilardy Original, Zandra Rhodes, and many more. An extensive Glossary, informative Resources section, Bibliography, and Index make this book friendly while instructional, securing an important place in the libraries of fashion historians, vintage clothing buffs, antique dealers, and accessories collectors alike.
Handbag Designer 101 is the bible for handbag designers or women who aspire to make their own bags. Included in the book are instructions for creating the fifteen essential bag styles—clutch, hobo, tote, and more—made simple with easy-to-follow how-to illustrations, suggested difficulty levels, and color photography. Advice from famous bag designers and today’s hottest indie designers accompany each pattern.Also included is the inside scoop on turning your handbag hobby into a successful business. From designing, to making, to marketing, Handbag Designer 101 teaches you everything you need to know.
In this sumptuous full-color compendium, award-winning designer Monica Botkier celebrates seventy of the most coveted bags of the past seventy-five years, from Chanel, Dior, Gucci, Hermès, Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, and other international couture houses, as well as top bag designers such as Anya Hindmarch and Nancy Gonzalez. Exquisitely crafted luxury handbags are an obsession. The look, the feel of soft leather, that new bag smell that induces a swoon—a gorgeous handbag does more than complete a look, it telegraphs taste and chic, and it inspires envy, whether it’s an Hermès Birkin, a quilted Chanel Boy bag with its signature gold chain, or a Céline Mini Luggage Tote. Award-winning handbag designer Monica Botkier pays homage to these gorgeous objects of desire and the top couture houses and artists that have designed and produced them from the end of World War II to today. Handbags: A Love Story showcases the creations of designers such as Azzedine Alaïa, Balenciaga, Bottega Veneta, Céline, Chanel, Chloé, Christian Dior, Mark Cross, Fendi, Salvatore Ferragamo, Givenchy, Goyard, Gucci, Hermès, Anya Hindmarch, Judith Leiber, Olympia Le-Tan, Loewe, Mansur Gavriel, Stella McCartney, Alexander McQueen, Miu Miu, Moschino, Mulberry, Prada, Yves Saint Laurent, Valentino, Roger Vivier, Louis Vuitton, and more. This magnificent, eye-catching anthology tells the story of seventy bags in 200 stunning photographs and vintage and contemporary advertisements and illustrations, as well as quotes, anecdotes, and interviews with designers, stylists, and editors. Each entry offers a concise yet in-depth look at a specific bag and its history—from a celebrity muse, such as Jane Birkin, to collaborations such as the graffiti-splattered bags Marc Jacobs and Stephen Sprouse created for Louis Vuitton. An informative, entertaining exploration of how "It Bags" have influenced fashion, culture, and feminine identity, Handbags: A Love Story touches on a wide-range of subjects, such as how a bag is constructed and handbags on the silver screen. With an elegant full-color silkscreened cloth case and a thick acetate four-color jacket; two long, wide satin markers, and two-color endpapers, this gorgeous tribute is an essential accessory for handbag fanatics, fashion lovers, and pop culture enthusiasts.
An exhilarating look at the quintessential American modernist, acclaimed for her "Auntie Mame" lifestyle, her iconoclastic approach to fashion, and her visionary designs for the modern American woman. A talented artist who happened to become a fashion designer, Bonnie Cashin was brilliant, free-spirited, and unconventional in all she did. Revered for her intellectual and independent approach to fashion, Cashin changed the way women dressed with her revolutionary, forward-thinking approach to life. She designed chic, functional clothing for the modern woman "on the go"—women like herself who loved to travel and lived life to the fullest. The most successful independent fashion designer of her day, Cashin worked outside the fashion industry, yet is arguably the most influential designer of our time, revered in the fashion world and a muse for designers working today. Cashin is credited with many fashion "firsts," including introducing the concept of layering and championing such timeless shapes as ponchos, tunics, and kimonos. She is acclaimed for inventing the "it bag," with her classic handbag designs for Coach in the early 1960s. Brimming with a half-century of creative work, Bonnie Cashin celebrates the designer’s incredible, well-traveled life and her revolutionary designs with an unflinching, happy elegance.
Presents a guide to personal style, sharing practical information and modern dress etiquette guidelines in such areas as identifying flattering colors and cuts and preparing a wardrobe for a variety of needs and occasions.
This volume is an unprecedented history of Louis Vuitton’s women’s bags, the most coveted line of accessories in women’s fashion. At the heart of Louis Vuitton are its City Bags, a range of women’s bags that dates back to the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring the trademark monograms of the house, the City Bag story began with the Steamer, a resort bag designed in 1901 to be packed inside a much larger steamer trunk. These bags have in a hundred years formally diversified into a dizzying array of handbags for every conceivable function demanded by the modern woman. Profoundly influential, City Bags are now known to millions by their descriptive names (Keepall, Bucket, Papillon, Alma, Locket, Noe, Speedy) and are still evolving into more fantastical forms. Lavishly illustrated with new and archival photography, historical graphics, landmark editorials, and ad campaigns, the volume traces the history of these specific bag families, and examines the earliest specimens and today’s most sought-after collectibles, including Vuitton’s collaborations with Takashi Murakami, Stephen Sprouse, Richard Prince, Yayoi Kusama, and Rei Kawakubo and one-off projects by Zaha Hadid, Shigeru Ban, Vivienne Westwood, Helmut Lang, Andrée Putman, and of course, Marc Jacobs. Louis Vuitton: City Bags is an ambitious volume on the creation and cultivation of a cultural phenomenon.
An insider's hilarious, whirlwind account of his years spent globe-trotting in search of the holy grail of handbags: the Birkin For more than twenty years, the Hermès Birkin bag has been the iconic symbol of fashion, luxury, and wealth. Though the bag is often seen dangling from the arms of celebrities, there is a fabled waiting list of more than two years to buy one from Hermès, and the average fashionista has a better chance of climbing Mount Everest in Prada pumps than of possessing one of these coveted carryalls. Unless, of course, she happens to know Michael Tonello . . . Michael's newfound career started with an impulsive move to Barcelona, a vanished job assignment, no work visa, and an Hermès scarf sold on eBay to generate some quick cash. But soon the resourceful Michael discovered the truth about the waiting list and figured out the secret to getting Hermès to part with one of these precious bags. Millions of dollars worth of Birkins later, Michael had become one of eBay's most successful entrepreneurs—and a Robin Hood to thousands of desperate rich women. With down-to-earth wit, Michael chronicles the unusual ventures that took him to nearly every continent, from eBay to Paris auction house and into the lives of celebrities and poseurs. Flirting with danger, Michael recounts the heady rush of hand delivering his first big score to famed songwriter Carole Bayer Sager in Paris; how he had to hire thugs to rescue a bag that one of his "shoppers" held for ransom; and the story of the Oscar-worthy performances that allowed him to snag "reserved" bags from other, less dogged Birkin seekers. Whether he's relating his wining and dining, buying and selling, dodging and weaving, laughing and crying, or schmoozing and stammering, Michael is a master raconteur who weaves together tales of hunting Birkins in the world's most posh locales, memories of meals that would make any gastronome salivate, anecdotes of obsessed collectors with insatiable desires, and sweetly intimate stories about his family, friends, and finding true love. The result is a memoir that is distinctive, fun, page-turning, and as addictive as its namesake.
