What’s Up With All These Open, Off-Kilter, One-Sided Bags?

The inside of my bag is, at any given moment, a crime scene. 

Not a graphic one (necessarily), but the kind that has a detective scrambling for clues and muttering something about “no clear motive.” There’s a receipt from three months ago (I’m fairly positive that I’m going to need that for something – I just don’t know what that something is), a lip balm I swore I lost last September, three pens that don’t work, one that does (surprisingly), and, on the occasion that I haven’t forgotten them at home, my housekeys.

And I like to think I’ve made my peace with it…for the most part. 

The innards of my bag – that’s just for me to see, right? The anatomy of my own mind! Yet, I genuinely believed I was the only person in the world whose stuffed bag was more adjacent to an evidence locker than a curated carryall. Surely everyone else around me strode with purpose stuffed in their purses?

Until, dear reader, I discovered Contents.

Published in 2000 by the late Kate Spade and her husband, Andy Spade, the now cult-favorite book remains perhaps the most intimate handbag experiment ever orchestrated, though its premise is deceptively simple. Sold in its own gray felt bag, Contents, quite literally, splayed out the contents of 46 women’s bags, dumped out and photographed over the course of 124 pages. 

“It occurred to us that the items in your handbag essentially define who you are and what is important to you,” the late designer told The New York Times in 2000, “We wondered, ‘Would women from all walks of life be willing to show us their possessions, their keepsakes, their car keys?’” 

In a (not entirely surprising) turn of the trend-cycle, it seems that designers on the 2026 runways are asking the same question: are you willing to show it all?

The Birkin Effect Strikes Again!

But Contents was hardly the first of its kind. 

In a June 1999 NYT piece that served as a precursor to the book, Spade herself bared it all in the series “What’s In My Satchel.” Revealed throughout the piece is her cellphone, a tiny rawhide moccasin (chew toy for her “Maltese terrier, Henry”), her passport (she hadn’t held a driver’s license since moving to New York in 1986), and a digital camera (“for a weekend trip to Kansas City,” her hometown) A brief autobiography, in bag form.

The book that followed was essentially the same idea, only with company.

“These women were really willing to talk about themselves through their objects,” noted the project’s stylist, Jerry Schwartz; the women in question were plucked from Spade’s own universe. “We just wanted it to be eclectic New Yorkers,” opined creative director Julia Leach, “what could be more interesting than pulling out all the things that they carried around?” 

And indeed, the contents of Contents – Palm Pilots, Metrocards, Blockbuster membership cards, blocky-buttoned Nokias, and on one occasion, an actual calculator – form an anachronistic treasure trove telling of a bygone era.

Yet, as always, it was Jane Birkin who was ahead of the curve. 

In a 1988 interview with Agnès Varda, for instance, Birkin offloaded the entirety of her overflowing Birkin — the same one, charm-laden, sticker-festooned, and lived-in to within inches of its very expensive life, that fetched $10.1 million at Sotheby’s last year — onto the 16th arrondissement, the Eiffel Tower looming large behind. “When you show it all, you reveal very little,” Birkin gleefully offers, mischief curling up at the corner of her lips. 

In 2026, it seems, the fashion industry has collectively decided to ask this question all over again, and the bags on their runways – not entirely unlike Birkin’s characteristic naughtiness – have begun to behave very badly indeed!

Bags Behaving Badly

When Katy Perry had us all reflecting over the lyric, “do you ever feel like a plastic bag?” back in 2010, she probably wasn’t talking about the same plastic bag one Mrs. Victoria Beckham uses…which just so happens to be an Hermès Kelly, carried wide open and off-kilter, flap open and sangles askew, in the rain, no less! “I am not overly precious about my belongings. This is a plastic bag to me! Kisses xx” appeared to be Posh Spice’s punchline.

Of course, for someone who rolled up to school in a Rolls, that’s merely par for the course. But Beckham isn’t the only one – within the New York celebrity circles, Jennifer Lawrence was spotted flaunting a rare vintage Monaco Kelly flung open, while Sarah Jessica Parker showed up at the Booker Prize with a Fendi Peekaboo in tow, its lavender sequined lining on full, unabashed display, bursting forth with glitter atop the otherwise all-brown look.

Over at the Spring/Summer 2026 runways, a new round of high-stakes creative director musical chairs swung into place as debutante designers launched a fresh crop of delightfully off-kilter, artfully undone handbags.

Matthieu Blazy sent out a reworked Chanel 2.55, its structure reinforced with wire to keep it permanently, defiantly ajar, whispering of Coco Chanel’s secret love letters. “I’m interested in the aspect of time and what we cherish,” Blazy offered, by means of an elegant excuse for a bag that won’t close. At Dior, Jonathan Anderson’s bow-bedecked Cigale bags dangled daintily from a single strap, a departure from the brand’s buttoned-up signature. 

At Loewe, the former Proenza boys presented their Amazona 180 — unzipped, slanted 45 degrees, its metallic anagram logo peeking out to anyone paying attention. At Fendi, Peekaboos gaped wide to reveal sequined interiors and three-dimensional polka dots, daring the viewer to reach through the screen and snap them closed, while Dilara Findikoglu’s models strutted with their Hysteria bags bulging with disintegrating lingerie, cigarettes, and cherries. 

And Miuccia Prada, characteristically, had been ahead of the whole trend— her Cleo bags teetering from oversized buckle straps as far back as FW24!

Attenzione, pickpocket! — but make it fashion.

Are Closed Bags for People With Something to Hide?

“They’re holding those bags like they’re holding a puppy!” exclaims body language expert Lillian Glass, Ph.D., in a Vogue profile, referring to a series of images from the Prada Fall 2011 runway.

Of Phoebe Philo’s Céline, where models hauled their bulbous, buttery leather totes like a babushka’s sack of potatoes, the media and communications veteran (and author of over 28 books on the subject) said, “You want it close to you because it holds your life, so you’re holding it for dear life.”

As for Marc Jacobs’ Louis Vuitton show that season, where models, handcuffed from behind, held on to their bags, Glass found it a display of self-confidence and self-assurance: “it says you have nothing to hide.”

But if clutching your purse signals “keep away!”, and holding it behind your back signals bravery, what does it say to have your $11,000 Chanel flapping open in the breeze, risking it all with your potentially free-falling belongings?

15 years down the line, perhaps it says everything we humans can’t. Pick your adjective for the current moment — apocalyptic, dystopian, physically burnt out, spiritually threadbare, or all of the above. “Sometimes I also feel like that bag,” wrote fashion-writer Emma Childs, “It’s a little tilted, open, but still trying to stay in the middle of the storm.”

Like Mary-Kate Olsen’s wine-stained, ink-blotched Balenciaga (“It explains my life,” she famously told W Magazine), perhaps exposing – or even embracing – something as intimate as the innards of our bag feels a little frisky, a little playful, a little naughty, and wholly empowering; the way the simple act of shopping for lingerie becomes empowering in a Madonna MV.

After all, it was Jane Birkin herself – the originator of the trend – who’d so pointedly asked, when you’re showing it all, how much are you revealing exactly?