Handbag encyclopaedia A - C

There are quite a few ways to list and categorise handbags. Looking at our own wardrobes, some of us do it by colour, some by favourite style, some of us line our bags up to match the shoes we wear them with. Then you can define handbags by brand, by age, by style … to be honest, whatever way you do it, we know that having more knowledge about the designer, the manufacture and the history of your handbag will bring greater enjoyment. It may also help you to learn how to care for your bag, so that your fave bags remain looking good for longer. 

We’re going to look at handbags alphabetically because we love the idea of bringing some of the less well known handbag facts to our Blue Button Bags blog readers!

Acorn bags

Aficionados know that Acorn bags are a very special brand - from the US, they hand-craft beautiful bags that fit to bicycles. Yes, bicycles! While it may not be familiar to many of Blue Button’s readership, this tiny organisation has won a following of bike riders that use Acorn bags and won’t have anything else. If you have a bicycle rider in your life, then browsing the online Acorn store might produce the perfect gift for them.

Backpack 

The favourite bag of children everywhere, backpacks have overtaken satchels as the bag of choice for school. While they’re great for your spine because they help keep your posture good, they are also renowned for creasing clothes and they don’t look great with a stylish outfit.

Bucket bag

A favourite of the catwalk, this bag is hotly tipped to be a 2015 favourite - The Guardian even has a bucket bag rundown! Bucket bags are popular but not always practical; drawstring type tops are slightly more secure but only marginally so. The real difficulty with bucket bags is twofold, they are a pickpocket’s delight because they are so easy to dip into, and conversely, they often frustrate busy women because you have to rummage around inside them to find what you want. They are good-looking handbags though, and work very well for women who don’t have to carry too many small items around.

Clutch bag

The clutch is a perennial - it is the bag of choice for weddings and evening events, partly because it has a traditional association with luxury and high status. Because it has to be held in the hand, carrying a clutch suggests that the owner is rich enough not to need to do anything for herself, like open doors, drive cars (or carriages as it would have been originally), remove coats, pay for anything … whilst this idea is unconscious, it’s no accident that the clutch bag remains an essential part of glitzy events where appearing to be rich or famous - or both - is part of the fun! An envelope is a sub-category of the clutch; shaped like a clutch bag but with a flap that folds down over the front of the bag - the name says it all, really. Similarly a fold-over clutch has a handle that can be folded down, often to change the bag back into a clutch from being a bag that can be hung off the wrist. 

By Kay Sexton

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Handbag trends in the UK

Research and Markets has added a new profile to its research surveys - handbags!  Okay, it might not  be the most exciting news in the world to you, but as a handbag designer, I found it fascinating. Looking at their findings in detail was really interesting too. 

First fact - tote bags are the largest of the four sectors in ‘handbag’ retailing - making up 30.77% of the market all on their own. 

The other three bag categories are:

Shoulder bags

Purses and Wallets

Satchels and Saddles.

What’s more interesting is what’s not there - no clutches and no classic ‘hand’ bags like the Kelly which, at least in the version popularised by Grace Kelly herself, didn’t have a shoulder strap. Bag fashions definitely change, and I wonder whether we’ll ever see a return to bags carried on the wrist, but probably not, women have too much to carry now, including tablets, and hanging that weight off your arm would soon get uncomfortable. 

E-commerce and designer bags

And the good news for us at Blue Button Bags is that the handbag market, in the UK at least, is buoyant with growth being driven by a recovering economy and a growing recognition of the value of a well designed bag that will become a classic item. E-commerce is the biggest area of growth with niche designer bags finding their place in the market as well as a strong interest in vintage handbags and shoulder bags with personalised details such as embellishments and modifications.

However, there is a little cloud on the horizon. The handbag market in the UK might struggle in future as the population ages and declines - I assume that this is because smart women will buy well designed bags that last and last, so they won’t need to keep buying more bags! 

The most famous handbags in the UK

Second fact. The report goes on to talk about the key vendors, who are very much the bag designers you’d expect to be on the list: Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Hermes etc but also a couple of relatively new kids on the block such as Michael Kors and Radley. 

What’s common to the new designers is how eminently practical their bags are - Michael Kors with a background in sportswear, has become THE designer tote of the decade, and that’s no surprise, given how well his bags hold up to rough treatment, while Radley’s iconic Scotty Dog logo represents a fun, fashionable brand line that is designed to work as hard as the women who buy its bags. 

So I’m quietly thrilled to be in the vanguard of fashion in the UK handbag industry, and I always wonder to myself whether any of the bags that appear on the arms of celebrities in the media are quietly hiding a Blue Button Bag organiser inside!


By Kay Sexton


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Handbag museums

Who doesn’t like to travel? And who doesn’t like a chance to browse handbags?  Well, probably quite a few people, but if you, like me, are a fan of both travel and bags, you're bound to find something to thrill you in today’s blog post. There are actually three handbag museums in the world, and we’ve put together a short guide to them all.

So starting with those purses, which is what our American friends call handbags, and which often causes confusion in the world of handbag fans, the ESSE Purse Museum in Little Rock Arizona is a tiny but perfectly formed venture. One of their permanent exhibitions, showing 20th century American women through the bags they carried, is an amazing photo-history of a nation and a century, as well as being a wonderful tour of bags through a hundred years. It is a small museum, so give yourself a couple of hours, then another half hour for the very well-stocked gift shop, and remember they aren’t open on Mondays. Entry fee $10 and no coffee shop but there are plenty of nice places to eat nearby. One of the nice things about the ESSE Purse Museum is you can photograph yourself with your bag and send the picture to them to add to their archive which makes us into a party of the living history of handbags. 

Simone Handbag Museum

The first thing to say about the Simone Handbag Museum on Garosugil in Gangnam, Korea, is that it’s shaped like a handbag! Founded by Kenny Park, a Korean supplier of handbags for designer labels it features, somewhat 

surprisingly, only European handbags.  Displays include a history of bags from the 1820s to the modern day, and another room featuring the most modern examples of European design. It’s an amazing display, where each bag-carrying mannequin has been built by hand to give the best exposure to the bag itself. There’s a café, gift shop and bag shop, as well as an amazing area for customers to try making their own bags and a shop that sells unique leathers to customers who wish to have bags made. The curated exhibitions are of incredibly high quality, and the workshop areas are fun, so this is definitely one that needs most of a day to visit. Some of the information is in Korean only, but many of the staff speak great English and will help you decipher the detail that makes this museum so special. Simone Handbag Museum, 17 Dosan-Daero 13 Gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea

The pre-eminent world class museum for handbag enthusiasts is the Tassenmuseum Hendrikje in Amsterdam. It has more than 4000 items, dating back to the 16th century, and it all began back in the 1980s when Hendrikje Ivo bought a small tortoiseshell back that was dated back to 1820. It started a passion in her which her husband Heinz soon came to share - together they collected over 3000 bags before opening a museum in their own home in 1996. Since 2007 that museum has been moved to a townhouse in central Amsterdam and a thousand more bags have been added to the collection. A small entrance fee of around 10 Euros earns you a thorough grounding in the history of handbags. There’s a great tea rooms too, which, if you book in advance, allows you to have a special bag themed ‘fashion’ tea! Herengracht 573, 1017 CD Amsterdam, Netherlands

By Kay Sexton

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Four ways to style your little balck dress

We’ve all got a little black dress, and we all love to wear it, because classics become classics for a reason. The LBD is sophisticated yet simple, flattering yet unpretentious. There’s just one thing wrong … it can become boring! Not for anybody else, but for us, the wearer of the dress - sometimes we sigh when we look at our LBD and that’s the time to try a fresh new look without breaking the bank.

Bag your LBD

We love this idea - the right bag completely changes the look of a little black dress. For summer, try pairing your dress with a large raffia clutch and a broad brimmed straw hat. Rope heeled espadrilles complete this casual but elegant look. For a statement of style try court-heeled shoes, a patent leather shoulder bag and gloves - an air of almost regal elegance will result.

Waist not want not

A belt is the simplest and sometimes the most effective way to reprise your LBD. The options are endless: a wide cummerbund style belt with a string of pearls is effortlessly classic evening wear; a sash of tribal material or animal print, teamed with boots and a suede jacket gives you a striking outfit for a day’s shopping, while a gilt belt with metallic stilettos and a statement necklace will change your office little black dress into something seductive for cocktails after work.

Jacket juggle

Nothing alters the look of an LBD more than a jacket. A cream velvet or fun-fur cape around the shoulders creates an Audrey Hepburn look - svelte but not sexy. A black leather bomber jacket and killer heels is exactly the opposite - sophistication with a grown-up edginess. You can even throw a hoodie over your little black dress and pull on some Converse trainers … it really works!

Hermes scarf trick

Summer Breeze Tote Bag

Bride de Cour Canard, Hermes

Above all though, we love the Hermes scarf trick. From the moment we saw this on How to Wear a Hermes Scarf, we were on a quest to find the ideal Hermes scarf for each of our bags and while we won’t bore you with every permutation we came up with, we do think we have an outright winner. Summer Breeze is one of our best selling bags, and we think it is perfectly complemented by the  Bride de Cour Canard scarf in yellow. The clever way that tying the scarf to the neckline of the dress completely alters the appearance of this classic garment is nothing short of astonishing, and the way the scarf and bag enhance each other is lovely. Our LBD will never bore us again!