As Jil Sander's £90 Market Bag is hailed as having killed off the It bag, Celia Walden explain why her own infatuation with expensive designer holdalls was only ever short lived
Victoria Beckham, who single-handedly killed off the It Bag
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! Years ago, I read that "bottoms" were back. Imagine how mortified I felt, having walked around with my derriere for months, completely oblivious to my enduring faux pas.
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. Not just dead, but putrid and decomposing, with the interlinked golden Cs on a Chanel flap bag left only to be dug up by archeologists.
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 an £1,500 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. Made from an almost 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 yesterday, an Emperor's New Clothes-like murmur went up from the women.
"It's, er… Well, it's um…" Offensively ugly? Absolutely. But then again, so are most It bags.
Back in the 1990s when the term was first coined following an 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 Chloé number, and the power of the thing blew me away. I would walk into parties with it dangling from my forearm (it is terribly vulgar to wear it in the crook of your inner-elbow, like Victoria Beckham) and marvel at the fact that the bag was the focus of attention.
I could feel the heat of female covetousness as I pretended to make small-talk, too conscious of 'the bag' to take in what anyone was saying, too worried about spilling a drop of wine on its premium quality cowhide to bring the glass to my lips. That bag felt like psychological artillery. Remember those iconic pictures of Grace Kelly cowering behind her Hermès bag as she was beseiged by paparazzi? It bags were a shield as well as a status symbol, there to scare away lesser mortals.
Out of the glare of social circles, The Bag suddenly seemed embarrassing and incongruous. Turning up at the Coach and Horses with a Chloé Paddington felt like walking into a romantic restaurant with a screaming infant in your arms. And where do you put the thing? Not on the beer-stained 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 actively had to pretend to be someone else. Plus and here's the nub - I'd secretly been feeling attracted to other, less ostentatious bags for some time. There was a studded burgundy bag from Whistles that was Z-list in status terms, and a plain leather satchel from an Ibiza market which was every bit as beautifully made as anything from Fendi. My It-bag, I realised, was like the searingly dull male model I'd dated for a few weeks whom I left, with no regrets, when he'd suggested on the eve of the 1992 general election that "it would be easier if all the political parties just joined together".
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. Having spent centuries fighting against objectification, women don't seem to mind being overlooked, even ignored, for their YSL Muse or their Dior Samurai. Surely the real beauty of fashion is mysterious and idiosyncratic the characteristic of the individual rather than the crowd.
