An exploration of the role of the handbag in the history of culture, fashion, and material production The history of the handbag—its design, how it has been made, used, and worn—reveals something essential about women's lives over the past 500 years. Perhaps the most universal item of fashionable adornment, it can also be elusive, an object of desire, secrecy, and even fear. Handbags explores these rich histories and multiple meanings.
This book features specially commissioned photographs of an extraordinary, newly formed collection of fashionable handbags that date from the 16th century to the present day. It has been acquired for exhibition in the first museum devoted to the handbag, in Seoul, South Korea. The project is a commission undertaken by experimental exhibition-maker Judith Clark, whose innovative practices are revealed in Handbags.
Essays by leading fashion historians and an acclaimed psychoanalyst investigate the history of gesture, the psychoanalysis of bags, and the museum's state-of-the-art mannequins and archive cabinets. In order to preserve the words that describe the unique qualities of each bag, a terminology of handbags has been compiled.

Handbags: The Making of a Museum

Arts & Photography

Evans, Caroline

Clark, Judith

De LA Haye, Amy

Wilcox, Claire

Phillips, Adam.

Graphic Design

Yale University Press

Featuring a new format, design, and garments, this revised and expanded guide is an inspiring resource for those fascinated by modern fashion and the world of haute couture. 
20th-Century Fashion in Detail reveals the elaborate embroidery, intricate pleats, and daring cuts that make up some of the most beautiful garments in the twentieth- century fashion collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of the world’s top fashion and design museums. Authors Claire Wilcox and Valerie D. Mendes, leading fashion experts from the V&amp;A, have written a book that will be an invaluable resource for students, collectors, and designers.
Including exquisite haute-couture pieces, from sequined Chanel ensembles to embellished Dior evening gowns, this revised and expanded edition features more than 30 new garments. Each piece is accompanied by detail photography and line drawings showing its complete construction. An extraordinary exploration of the techniques used by couturiers, 20th-Century Fashion in Detail will delight all followers of fashion. 115 illustrations in color with 170 line drawings

20th-Century Fashion in Detail (V&A Fashion in Detail, 1)

Lister, Jenny

Cullen, Oriole

Mendes, Valerie D.

Stanfill, Sonnet

Thames&Hudson

A comprehensive look at the changing styles and uses of one of fashion’s best-loved accessories, the bag, throughout history
Illuminating the evolution of bag designs and uses from the medieval period to today, Claire Wilcox explores varied iterations of this cult accessory, from early drawstring creations and richly worked ecclesiastical purses to large work bags of the eighteenth century and the small reticules that were designed to complement high-waisted Empire line dresses.
Increased travel in the nineteenth century brought about the leather handbag as we know it today, while the twentieth century saw an explosion of innovations, from 1930s designs reflecting the streamlined American aesthetic and the use of new synthetics such as imitation patent leather and Vynide, to the rise of the luxury designer handbag by the likes of Hermes, Gucci, Chanel, and Prada.
Written by fashion curators who spent years at the V&amp;A, Bags is fully illustrated in color throughout and arranged chronologically. A detailed glossary, bibliography, and index conclude the book. 90+ color illustrations

Bags (V&A Accessories)

History & Criticism

A photographic history of a wide array of handbags and purses ranges from the elegant to the eccentric and includes a captivating account of the various functions of the handbag throughout the twentieth century.

A Century of Bags

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Crafts & Hobbies

Book Sales

Three major trends currently dominate international fashion: the invasion of Paris couture houses by hip British designers; the creation of highly conceptual collections by austere European minimalists; and the near-architectural construction of contemporary Japanese clothes. Spearheading these movements are members of what could be called the old-school avant-garde-uncompromising yet established designers like Alexander McQueen and Hussein Chalayan, Martin Margiela and Helmut Lang, Rei Kawakubo and Issey Miyake. 
The official publication of the exhibition of the same name at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, Radical Fashion spotlights the work of 11 such mavericks. Stunning photo-essays, created by the individual designers specially for the book, paired with stimulating commentary by curators and fashion historians, make this look book the ultimate accessory for anyone addicted to style.

Radical Fashion

Victoria & Albert Museum

Vivienne Westwood is a global icon whose career has successfully spanned three decades, from the early days of punk to the coming-of-age of her own fashion-house. Published to accompany a major V&amp;A exhibition - the first ever Vivienne Westwood retrospective - this book is also the first full-length study of her work as a groundbreaking fashion designer.

Vivienne Westwood

INDIEFAB Book of the Year Awards -- 2014 GOLD Winner for Photography The first major book to celebrate the entire career of legendary fashion photographer Horst P. Horst. The first comprehensive book on Horst P. Horst, this richly illustrated survey accompanies a retrospective of the photographer’s career, spanning fashion, nudes, portraiture, interiors, and art, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. For an incredible six decades, Horst’s work graced the pages and covers of Vogue, beginning in the 1930s alongside luminaries such as Cecil Beaton and George Hoyningen-Huene. With equal admiration for the physical ideals of classical sculpture and the surrealism of Salvador Dali, Horst crafted some of fashion’s most iconic images. Newly researched essays follow the photographer as he captured—and mingled with—the great thinkers, designers, and muses of his day, among them Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel. Known first as a master photographer of French and British couture, Horst also left his mark on interior and lifestyle photography with his work in House &amp; Garden. This survey traces a career remarkable for its range, daring, and depth.

Horst: Photographer of Style

MUIR, Robin

GARNER,Philippe

Individual Artists

Skira/Rizzoli

Seven versions of a Caribbean legend--each told in a different dialect--describe the birth of a mysterious frogchild to Magdelena Divina, a patron saint worshiped by Hindu and Muslim Indians, Africans, and Catholics. A first novel.

Modern Fashion in Detail

Mendes,Valerie

Overlook Books

The impassioned letter Oscar Wilde wrote from prison in the definitive edition featuring the famous Hart-Davis notes
Oscar Wilde wrote "I don't defend my conduct, I explain it", when he was imprisoned in Reading Gaol in 1895 for his violation of England's stringent laws against homosexuality. Wilde's notorious liaison with the Marquess of Queensberry's son, Lord Alfred Douglas ("Bosie"), had so inflamed the Marquess that he made public attacks on Wilde's character and morals. In return, Wilde sued for slander, an action which, to Wilde's bitter astonishment, led to a series of scandalous trials and convictions. From his cell in prison, Wilde wrote De Profundis, the detailed and unsparing revelation of his love and tragedy.
With a major feature film biography scheduled for release and the current tremendous success of the long-running play Gross Indecencies: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, the text of this remarkable document with the Hart-Davis notes is uniquely relevant. This volume alone provides the entire context of De Profundis; W. H. Auden's famous essay in The New Yorker further sets the stage.

An expert and intimate exploration of a life in clothes: their memories and stories, enchantments and spells. A linen sheet, smooth with age. A box of buttons, mother-of-pearl and plastic, metal and glass, rattling and untethered. A hundred-year-old pin, forgotten in a hem. Fragile silks and fugitive dyes, fans and crinolines, and the faint mark on leather from a buckle now lost. Claire Wilcox has worked as a curator in Fashion at the Victoria & Albert Museum for most of her working life. Down cool, dark corridors and in quiet store rooms, she and her colleagues care for, catalogue and conserve clothes centuries old, the inscrutable remnants of lives long lost to history; the commonplace or remarkable things that survive the bodies they once encircled or adorned. InPatch Work, Wilcox deftly stitches together her dedicated study of fashion with the story of her own life lived in and through clothes. From her mother's black wedding suit to the swirling patterns of her own silk kimono, her memoir unfolds in luminous prose the spellbinding power of the things we wear: their stories, their secrets, their power to transform and disguise and acts as portals to our pasts; the ways in which they measure out our lives, our gains and losses, and the ways we use them to write our stories.

Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes

Parenting & Relationships

Bloomsbury Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilcox, Claire. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Wilcox, Claire

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Wilcox, Claire. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Handbags: The Making of a Museum

20th-Century Fashion in Detail (V&A Fashion in Detail, 1)

Bags (V&A Accessories)

A Century of Bags

Radical Fashion

Vivienne Westwood

Horst: Photographer of Style

Modern Fashion in Detail

Modern Fashion in Detail

Patch Work: A Life Amongst Clothes