Who Invented the Clutch Bag? | QDaily Business History

Two names are impossible to leave out of the clutch bag's history: Napoleon's Empress Josephine, and Van Cleef & Arpels.

Someone once said that if you don't love the clutch bag, you don't love life itself. That plainly overstates the clutch's place in the world, but then again, more and more people now leave the house with a small bag in hand.

This bag that turns up everywhere grew out of the evening clutch. From the 1920s on, as Hollywood stars and socialites carried custom clutches to special occasions, the clutch became a fixture of eveningwear.

"No one wants to be thinking about a bag while showing off a graceful figure. What's more, a bag that's wrong for the moment can ruin the whole design of a dress," said Ellen Goldstein-Lynch, professor of accessories design at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York.

Micaela Erlanger, Meryl Streep's stylist, put it this way: "A clutch is mainly there to set off the whole look, but it shouldn't steal the show — much like jewelry."

The clutch grew out of the evening clutch. So where did the evening clutch come from?

It began as the small handbag of the Victorian era, which women generally used to carry handkerchiefs and smelling salts. Napoleon's wife, Empress Josephine, was fond of small handbags, and she made the style fashionable at court; from there it spread to the countryside.

After that Victorian vogue, though, the small handbag fell out of favor for a while. It came back after World War II, and went on to become a must-have for upper-class women at evening parties. Evening clutches then were made mostly of Lucite, phenolic resin, silk or brocade.

The world's oldest clutch bag.

A 19th-century clutch bag.

A clutch bag for casino use, 17th to 18th century.

Bear in mind that women had evening bags as far back as the 13th and 14th centuries — though those were pieced together from parts taken off elaborate tapestries, then finished with embroidery and small ornaments off religious ceremonial garments. The same clues tell us something else: women made these bags by hand themselves.

But the clutch was not always small.

For a time the things women stuffed into their bags kept multiplying: fans, perfume, calling cards. During the regency of Queen Elizabeth, roughly the 15th and 16th centuries, evening bags were crocheted into the shapes of grape clusters and frogs.

That fashion did not last long, and more elegant evening clutches soon took its place.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, a new card game gripped Europe; people of every class and age fell for this small game of chance. Women's clutches gained one more item: gambling chips. That produced another variant of the clutch — one made to look dashing yet elegant at the gaming table.

By the 19th century the clutch had taken on a more modern meaning: not just something to carry things in, but something to show off.

It was no longer a purely functional object; it could display a woman's taste and her needlework. This was also the period when women truly began to treat the bag as an accessory to be matched to an outfit, and to weigh the occasion — whether the bag was for a party or for shopping. In the new way of life the railways brought, these styles were handed down, and stayed handmade: painted and stitched with the owner's initials in her own hand.

By around 1930, in the Great Depression, you can see the economic crisis's mark on the clutch. Many people dug out their old bags and reworked them to use again.

Evening clutch designs from the 1820s.

Evening clutch designs from the 1830s.

Still, the years around 1930 matter in the history of the clutch. At the very least, the evening clutch gained a second name: the minaudière (French for a small cosmetics case).

That has to do with the French jewelry and watch house Van Cleef & Arpels. In 1930 the firm designed a "cosmetics case" of its own. The design was said to be inspired by Florence Gould, the American socialite and passionate patron of the arts. Gould, the story goes, liked to keep her belongings in a specially made cigarette case — a Lucky Strike case, to be exact.

These "cosmetics cases" were usually trimmed with gold and silver, and they quickly became a favorite of film stars and socialites.

Van Cleef & Arpels' rivals at the time included Tiffany & Co., Cartier and Chaumet. Each had clutch designs of its own, though none of them work in this field today. Later, Bottega Veneta made its own break with the past, swapping the gold and silver trim for leather.

Nearly every evening clutch on the market now had already taken shape by the 1930s.

Of course, we are reading the history of the clutch against the history of bags as a whole. As we noted when we wrote about the history of men's bags, after World War II the war left its mark on every bag design on the market — bigger, more practical — and the clutch grew a little larger too.

There was another plain fact: raw materials such as copper and leather were scarce. Makers of evening clutches began substituting plastic, wood and polyester fiber for what they could not get.

Out of this came a classic that still sells today. In 1947 Gucci's craftsmen heated bamboo and made it into parts for a bag. The bag was an immediate hit, and even after the war ended, the bamboo-handle bag kept selling well past 1950.

By the 1950s, the famous New Look silhouette was everywhere. After the war, new materials such as synthetic fiber, raffia and faux pearls went into bags. This was also the golden age of travel, and Hollywood stars were on the move all the time. Clutch designs grew finer, and went into mass production for the first time. The first designer clutches came in several models; Chanel, for one, was making its bags from fabric then, though it soon switched to leather.

In the 1960s, youthful clutch styles became more popular, such as the long, narrow bag. The 1970s that followed belonged to the sweeping feminist movement and to psychedelic rock. Then came the famous queen of the clutch, Judith Leiber, whose metal "Chatelaine" bag made her name; her idea of decorating evening bags with crystals became a story people still tell. The brand is still known for its haute couture bags, and is still a favorite of several U.S. First Ladies.

Evening bag designs from the 1850s.

Evening bag designs from the 1860s.

Gucci's bamboo-handle bag.

A Judith Leiber design from the 1970s.

An evening bag Judith Leiber made in 1978 from metal, glass and silk.

Another classic Judith Leiber design.

In the 1980s, the decade of high heels and miniskirts, the clutch grew shinier and the logos grew bolder.

No account of clutch innovation can leave out Fendi. In 1997 Fendi launched a classic bag made to be tucked under the arm, shaped a little like a baguette. The style has never gone out of fashion since. You see these bags everywhere, and it seems everyone can find a version they like: Hermès has its bag with the H logo, Chanel its bag with the two Cs.

The clutch is still a small corner of the accessories world. Limited by craft and materials, most clutch designers have pushed their work toward art.

A Nathalie Trad clutch takes at least two weeks to make, and usually costs 1,000 to 1,500 euros. Every step has its own specialist: someone goes to beaches in the Philippines to pick out the right shells, and because the process cannot run on industrial machinery, the shells are cut entirely by hand, so no two finished pieces are the same.

A clutch by Kristine Johannes costs somewhere between US$990 and US$3,000. "Each clutch is about 80 pieces of material fitted together, like an interlocking jigsaw," said Johannes, who now works with an Italian factory. "The clutch is a time-consuming craft, and a form of handwork that deserves respect."

An Alexander McQueen evening clutch.

A Chanel evening bag from the 1990s.

A Fendi bag in Sex and the City.

J.Crew and Alexander McQueen make clutches from time to time. But what really sets the dedicated clutch designers apart is that they work on this one thing alone — sometimes releasing only four new styles a year.

"I'm very optimistic about this market. In the past I felt that not many people treated the evening clutch as a product category in its own right. Apart from Judith Leiber, everyone who came later seems to be wise after the fact," said Brett Heyman, founder of Edie Parker. Before that she spent years doing public relations for Gucci and Dolce & Gabbana.

Today the clutch holds a small share of the accessories market, and it has moved out of eveningwear into everyday fashion. Like many fashion objects, it caught on from the top down — first a favorite of Empress Josephine, then something socialites and film stars carried to evening parties.

At the start, women probably kept a lipstick, a compact mirror, a comb and a key in the clutch. But this small, elegant bag still suits the new era well enough — for carrying a smartphone, say.

Cover image and in-text images from: hunghee.com, wardrobetrendsfashion.