Bag's Inside and Out: the V&A exhibition looks at the history of the handbag

Bags, Inside and Out at the V&A

In a case of truly unfortunate timing, the week before the Victoria and Albert Museum’s blockbuster show celebrating all things bag related – an exhibition over 18 months in the making, one of the largest ever in a museum, with loans from around the world – was to have opened on 25 April, Britain shut down in response to the coronavirus. The show was postponed.

So far, so normal for global cultural events during the pandemic. But then something unusual started to occur.

As the months of stasis stretched on, the whole concept of the handbag, that repository of stuff and signifier of personality, that accessory that had become so obsessively renewable it drove record-setting profits for numerous fashion brands, began to seem irrelevant. And not just because there were fears when lockdown began that bags could be virus carriers.

What was the point of a bag if no one could go out? Why did we ever think we needed so many of them in the first place? What are we supposed to do with all of those extra totes and purses and clutches? According to data from Euromonitor, a research firm, bag sales this year fell 10 per cent to 28 per cent in every region of the world compared with last year.

Suddenly it seemed as if, with 2020, the age of the handbag might actually have come to an end. With the V&A show, when it happened, if it happened, acting as its obituary.

As if.

This weekend Bags: Inside Out finally opens to the public, and what it suggests is that any rumour of the death of the handbag has been greatly exaggerated.

That, in fact, bags have been intertwined with both male and female identity for centuries, and have survived multiple crises, only to return with even more import. That reports from Dior and Hermès of handbags selling out as stores reopen in Asia and life returns to quasi-normal are actually not anomalies, but part of a historical pattern.

That the news of record vintage handbag auctions at Christie’s, the dominant force in the resale market, which recorded a total of $2,266,750 (£1,712,700) during an online sale in July, including $300,000 for a crocodile Hermès Diamond Himalaya Birkin 25, may be a harbinger of the future. That the hullabaloo on social media last week about Houston Rockets point guard James Harden giving rapper Lil Baby a black Prada nylon duffel bag for his birthday filled with very expensive treats was a sign of the times.

“People kept saying it was the end of bags,” said Lucia Savi, the curator who put the V&A show together. “But bags go hand in hand with humanity. We have always had to carry something.”

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Mary Quant (centre foreground) launches her 1967 footwear collection

Last year, while staff at the V&A were researching its major retrospective of Mary Quant, which opens next month, they launched a #WeWantQuant campaign, appealing to the public for clothes they might be willing to loan or donate. “We were overwhelmed,” the show’s co-curator, Jenny Lister, recalls: “We had more than a thousand emails from women – some friends of Quant’s and members of the bohemian circle to which she belonged – but most were ordinary women. Former students, teachers and nurses – some got in touch with us from as far afield as San Francisco and Australia.” One woman – and this makes Lister laugh with delight – described taking her Quant dress to Antarctica, to wear at the south pole. Some have hung on to their makeup (such as the eyeshadows Quant’s husband and business partner, Alexander Plunket Greene, jauntily dubbed “jeepers peepers”). The collective message was that Quant’s clothes were more than just clothes, they were cherished clues to the past. In the end, the museum could only make space for the offerings of 30 women (four of whom are interviewed below). But for everyone who lived through the Quant era, this show will be a form of time travel – back to the 60s and 70s and the coolest of surnames (that Q had kudos) and the simple daisy logo that kept on blossoming.

In a new foreword to her first autobiography, Quant by Quant (1966), Mary Quant remembers: “Life was a whizz! It was such fun and unexpectedly wonderful despite, or perhaps because of its intensity… we were so fortunate with our enormous luck and timing. We partied too – there were no real boundaries.” Her written style – ingenue enthusiasm – matched her clothes. For Quant, fashion was “a game” and her son, Orlando, (writing In the V&A’s catalogue) acknowledges the fun his parents had after they met as art students at Goldsmiths. He remembers how his father made life “riotously exciting”. He recalls people saying: “But Mary, you can’t do that…” (an invitation to go ahead). He also argues that his mother’s designs were more serious than her modest account of them, that they brought about an “attitude revolution that changed much more than fashion”.

At 89, Quant still sticks to her original line. “I loved wearing the clothes which I designed for like-minded friends and for myself,” she tells me by email. “They reflected the sense of freedom that we felt at the time – shorter skirts allowed mobility, to run, jump and to have fun in. As I get bored quickly, I was always seeking fresh inspirations so if they worked on me, then they would provide fashion for everyone who enjoyed the styling, the crazy accessories and the cosmetics.”

Lister emphasises Quant’s prescience: “She used clothes to demonstrate that change was coming. Fashion was no longer about couture, it was about expressing individuality.”

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Why you need to visit the Mary Quant exhibition at the V&A

Can’t imagine a world without mini skirts and hot pants? Well, if it wasn’t for the revolutionary designer, Dame Mary Quant, they wouldn't be part of our wardrobes.

And now, the V&A are honouring her subversive designs in their upcoming exhibition - and it’s a must-see.

So if you are a fashion fanatic or just like looking marvelling at great clothes - get ready to discover how one incredible woman revolutionised British street style, in an exhibition that epitomises female empowerment and ingenuity.

It will feature over 200 objects - including pieces from Dame Mary Quant’s personal archive that have never been seen before. It will not only include her incredible designs, like the rebellious mini-skirts and trousers for women, but it will also chart her rise to success throughout the 50s to the 70s, and share stories from friends and fans alike who wore her designs.

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More than just a miniskirt: New exhibitions reveal how Mary Quant shaped our world

Mary Quant at home in Chelsea, 1968

If you’re a British woman, you’ve probably got Mary Quant in your wardrobe. OK, maybe not literally – but if there’s a sleeveless shift or a tunic dress, a Peter Pan collar or a skinny-rib sweater, a pair of brightly coloured tights or even a PVC raincoat, you’re wearing Quant. And that’s before mentioning her most famous creation: the miniskirt.

She pioneered mass-market, trend-led clothing – but the looks Quant came up with have proved anything but throwaway, still influencing both high end and high street fashion more than 60 years after she opened her first boutique. And in 2019, her creative vision and enduring influence is being recognised by two new museum shows.

This spring, the V&A opens a major exhibition of her work, with more than 200 garments and accessories, including previously unseen gems from Quant’s own archive. But first, Swinging London: A Lifestyle Revolution opens at the Fashion and Textile Museum in London. It uses Quant, and designer Terence Conran, as a way into looking at the “youth quake” that shook London in the late Fifties and early Sixties, which transformed the way we live. It features rare and early designs by Quant and Conran, plus clothing, textiles, furniture, lighting and homeware by fellow members of the “Chelsea set”, the bohemian west London crowd they ran with.

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The V&A to host the largest ever Dior exhibition - Everything you need to know

The V&A is set to stage the largest and most comprehensive Dior exhibition in UK history. The show – which is entitled Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams – is also the biggest fashion exhibition to be put on by the museum since the hugely popular Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.

The exhibit will span from 1947 to present day, tracing the history and impact of the founder and the six other artistic directors to have helmed the house.

Here, we round up everything you need to know about what is sure to be one of 2019's most exciting exhibitions.

What will the exhibition cover?
Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams will trace the 71-year history of the House of Dior, beginning in 1947, when Christian Dior opened his couturier at 30 Avenue Montaigne, the site where it still stands today.

The major exhibition will trace this beginning through to present day – via the display of over 500 objects – looking at the impact of Dior's 'New Look' (and how it has been reinterpreted again and again throughout Dior's history) as well as the house's relationship with travel, flowers, history and so much more.

In addition to displaying some of the house's most iconic and memorable gowns, the exhibition will also highlight the breadth of creations that have come out of the fashion house over the years – and will pay tribute to those who have collaborated with Dior. This, entitled the 'Diorama' section, will showcase accessories from costume jewellery and hats to shoes, bags, archive lipstick and fragrance bottles.

Another highlight will no doubt be the 'Designers for Dior' section which will spotlight the work of the six creative directors who have helmed the label since Christian Dior passed away in 1957. It will celebrate how each designer has interpreted the vision of the label in their own way, while consistently sticking to the "codes of Dior".

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Christian Dior Exhibition Coming to the V&A

The next major fashion exhibition to open in London was announced this weekend with a cryptic message delivered via topiaried hedges outside the British Embassy building in Paris. In town for the haute couture shows that run all this week, fashion editors would recognise the silhouette anywhere, even in bush form: Christian Dior’s iconic Bar jacket, an essential component of his revolutionary 1947 collection The New Look.

The bushes told them that the rumour was true. The blockbuster Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams exhibition held at the Museum of Decorative Arts in Paris from last summer until January 2018 would travel across the channel to London. Opening in February 2019 at the V&A in South Kensington, the retrospective will be the museum’s largest show since Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty in 2015, and the largest Dior exhibition ever staged in the UK.

More than 200 rare Dior couture garments will be shown, from Christian Dior’s original designs to Maria Grazia Chiuri’s contemporary feminist T-shirts, via the work of historic creative directors Yves Saint Laurent, Marc Bohan, Gianfranco Ferré, John Galliano and Raf Simons. They will be shown alongside accessories, makeup, fragrance, photography, film, magazines, and Christian Dior’s personal possessions, with a special new Anglophile section exploring Monsieur Dior’s relationship with the UK added on for British audiences, despite our Brexity ways.

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V&A to host first Mary Quant exhibition in 50 years

The Victoria and Albert Museum has announced that it will be hosting a retrospective of the British designer Mary Quant’s work.

The exhibition, due to open in April 2019, will focus on Quant’s designs between 1955 and 1975, and will be the first international retrospective of the designer’s work in almost half a century.

With unprecedented access to Quant’s fashion archive, the display will bring together over 200 objects, many of which have never been on public display.

One of Britain’s most influential designers, Quant is famous for her bright, playful clothes that sparked a movement marked by a youthful change in fashion.

Quant had no formal design training, but her understanding of what young women wanted to wear was enough to turn her into a fashion mogul. Making A-line shiftdresses with little Peter Pan collars and teaming them with knee-length boots and coloured tights, Quant’s young style was popularised by celebrities and models like Twiggy and Jean Shrimpton.

But it was the miniskirt for which Quant’s reign is remembered. Trialling different hemlines in the early 1960s, the designer eventually settled on the thigh-high mini. A debate continues to rage over which designer actually invented the miniskirt (many say it was the Parisian André Courrèges) but what is undisputed is that it was Quant who popularised it.

In an early example of bubble up fashion trends, micro hemlines were adopted on the runways of designers like Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin.

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