A Century of Bags: Icons of Style in the 20th Century

The century has seen fashion itself emerge as an industry, with the rise of haute couture, and as new manufacturing, marketing and retail methods have made a wide range of clothes and accessories available to the mass market.

Claire Cox picks up all these threads in this story of a vital fashion accessory. She moves through the decades, highlighting the most interesting bags of the century, setting them in the context of the time, and discovering what they did for their wearer, decoratively, practically, and psychologically.