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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