What Women Carry in their Fashion Handbags: Then and Now

The differences and similarities between fashion handbags 50 years ago and today as illustrated in an article in the New York Times Magazine on January 21, 1945 and archived in the National Fashion Accessories Association archive highlight one outstanding point above all others - how universally integral fashion handbags are to women of the past, present, and, most assuredly, the future.

Women were (and are) very private about their fashion handbags.  The article compares the contents of fashion handbags to the secrets magicians are loathe to reveal.  Proper etiquette of the time called for men to look up towards the sky or ceiling every time the woman he was with opened up her women's handbag to retrieve or replace an item.  It was considered indecent and tactless for any person, man or woman, sneaks what they think is an innocent peek into fashion handbags. 

Fashion handbags aren't just a lighter form of carry-on luggage; fashion handbags are sacred vessels for a woman's daily tools and instruments for living, and fashion handbags are reflective of the personality of the women carrying them.  Though most women hold many of the same types of items in their fashion handbags, no two fashion handbags hold quite the same contents; in this, fashion handbags are like snowflakes: no two alike.

Whether leather - at the time an increasingly scarce material of choice for fashion handbags - or fur or fabric or plastic, ladies in the mid-1940s wanted their fashion handbags to be big!  And with all they put inside their fashion handbags, it's no wonder why.

At a time when women were more afraid of having their homes burgled than being robbed or purse-snatched face to face, women used to carry around their most valuable items, such as precious jewels, in their fashion handbags.  It was, in fact, unusually common to see women wearing faux jewelry out and about while carrying their valuable jewelry in their fashion handbags.

Typical items in fashion handbags in 1945 included: lipsticks, a compact, handkerchiefs, letters, laundry tickets, nylon stocking awaiting repair, an address book, a pack of cigarettes, multiple packs of matches, a leather picture folder, ration books (remember, there was a war on),business cards for furriers, beauty parlors, etc., paper scraps with telephone numbers scrawled on them, a hairnet, a bottle of vitamins, some slipcover samples, a fountain pen, and pencil or two, to name just a few. 

Want to compare these against the contents of fashion handbags of today?  Open your own and peer inside.  When was the last time you explored the contents of your own fashion handbags?