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Handbags

The Making of a Museum
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Book Hero Magic crafted this summary to help describe this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Summary
Handbags delves into the cultural, historical, and emotional significance of the handbag over the past 500 years. Through specially commissioned photographs of a unique collection dating from the 16th century to today, it unveils how this everyday object reflects women's lives and societal changes. Contributions from fashion historians and a psychoanalyst explore themes such as gesture, desire, and secrecy, while the book also highlights innovative museum practices surrounding the display of handbags.

Published in partnership with the Simone Handbag Museum in Seoul, this richly illustrated volume offers a deeply researched perspective on one of fashion's most universal adornments.
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Format: Hardback
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Ideal for readers interested in fashion history, cultural studies, and museum curation, as well as those curious about the symbolic and practical roles handbags have played throughout history.

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An exploration of the role of the handbag in the history of culture, fashion, and material production

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

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.

Published in association with the Simone Handbag Museum, Seoul.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780300186185

Publisher: Yale University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 15 August 2012

Country: United States

Imprint: Yale University Press

Illustration: 350 color + 50 b-w illus.

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Width: 216.0mm

Height: 267.0mm

Weight: 1565g

Pages: 272

About the Author

Judith Clark is professor of fashion and museology at London College of Fashion. Caroline Evans is professor of fashion history and theory at Central St. Martin's College of Art & Design. Amy de la Haye is professor of dress history and curatorship, Rootstein Hopkins Chair, at London College of Fashion. Adam Phillips is a psychoanalyst and writer. Claire Wilcox is senior fashion curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum.

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