Vogue Essentials: Handbags

This is a beautiful hardback collectors book for anyone who appreciates style. Carolyn Asome is one of the best fashion editors in the business and her analysis of a woman’s most important accessory is fascinating and inspiring. A gorgeous and insightful book that will also look great on your coffee table. A brilliant gift.

Save your money and buy a copy of Vogue.

Great reference book.

i love love love!

This is a fun little book for those who enjoy fashion and may aspire/have aspired to own many of the bags in this book, and is a great nostalgic journey for older fans of fashion to remember what they or their mothers may have worn and werked in the past. This is an ideal gift for my mother in law who adores fashion but particularly the equalising value of handbags that anyone (as long as they have the money to buy it!) can rock a handbag, you don't need to be a certain size or be limited by age or physicality or ableness much like the epithet by Marc Jacobs in the blurb. Though this book is aimed very much as a celebration as a woman's accessory please gentlemen and non-binary people be aware.It's a great little jaunt through fashion, fashion photography and some history through the 20th and early 21st century with iconic products, models and photographers juxtaposed to explore the themes of iconic bags, the ornate evening bag, the minimalist and the rule breaker 'street' bag with introductory remarks on the changes and continuity in design, designers, marketing and textiles which is also reflected in the captions to the accompanying photographs. However it's not a study by any means, it's lacking depth in the discussion of change & continuity, causation for change and significance of influence across time which I would like for a real meaningful exploration of the subject- for example they tiptoe towards the value of bags as talismans of self and identity , as marking the progress of feminist revolution, as indicators of the economic and social context of the time but run away back to pretty pictures when anything gets too deep.I like the thematic further than chronological approach, does seem a little haphazard in its organisation with the positioning of 1990s next to the 1960s and then off to another decade then back again, and some of the pictures are poor examples of the handbags one for example is black bag on black mac on black jeans in a small book it's hard to work out what the actual BAG looked like but the model was pretty! The disappointment is that it can seem a bit vacuous and capricious when it could have depth, it does look pretty which I think is the overall aim of this book, an aspirational inspiration for a particular range of demographics to drool over rather than empower or inform.