Lately, I’ve been meaning to do something with my hair.
You know, something of that dramatic, delightfully brazen nature that instantly signals to the world, here is the new me! The fantasy me!
The hair here is symbolic. Emily (now not in Paris) cuts bangs onto hers before breaking up with Gabriel for the 47th time. Addison Rae charges through the Icelandic plains atop an icy white steed as her psychotically pink tresses cascade down her shoulders in Headphones On. And a head-full of chaotic, clementine-orange hair grounds Kate Winslet’s otherwise larger-than-life Clementine in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
In fact, there’s something fiercely earnest to screwing with your hair.
“Hair is everything,” quips Fleabag with that same earnestness, “We wish it wasn’t, so we could actually think about something else occasionally, but it is.” Women in ancient Egypt dyed their hair red in the veins of the goddess Isis. On the other hand, women in ancient Rome opted for a divine blonde.
But it’s not just hair that’s rooted (*wink wink*) in superstition and symbolism. Our handbags, too, since their first recorded instance at the tail-end of the Ice Age and over the centuries, as seen in Sumerian inscriptions, Turkish ruins, Maori arts, and Olmec crafts, have been the source of many myths and mystiques. They quite literally hold our secrets, after all!
So today, we explore some of the secrets and superstitions surrounding our precious purses (and purse-related accoutrements).
On the Health of Your Wealth
In Japan, putting an origami paper frog inside your wallet is said to bring good fortune. The Czechs, on the other hand, place fish scales since they resemble silver coins. In the US, the rare $2 bill is said to attract fairer finances, while in France, placing your bread (or, shall we say, pain) upside down supposedly paves the way for pain and poverty.
Throughout history, such superstitions abound aplenty.
But perhaps fewer finance (and fashion!) folklores are more pervasive across countries and cultures than putting your purse on the floor.
As the saying goes in Chinese Feng Shui, “A purse on the floor is money out the door.” Putting your handbag—or anything of value, really—on the ground is associated with lowliness and lack of respect.
In Cambodia, similarly, this is thought to cause all the money to fall out of your purse – literally and figuratively – or simply attract bad luck, as believed in Indonesia. Brazilians make a beeline for any bag on the ground for fear of going broke. Latina girlies, on the other hand, are told growing up by their mom or abuela that “money runs away” when their purse “kisses” the floor.
Clearly, when Carrie quips, “Oh, thank you, my bag was exhausted,” to the offer of a purse-stool in And Just Like That, it’s not that the glamour of it all trumps the gastronomy of eating out (even though Le Dalíin Le Meurice in Paris has invested in those $10,000 Hermès Pippa purse-stools).
It’s simply to say, your purse, after all, is also human.
The Tales of the Talisman
In Thailand, where the diktat of superstitions dictate just about everything from lottery tickets to evil-eye amulets, it makes sense that fashion would be too. “The design came from one of our old T-shirts,” says Adisak Jirasakkasem, cofounder of the underground Bangkok-based brand, IWANNABANGKOK. “A friend wore it and got hit by a car. She survived. So… we turned her into an alien goddess (for the upcoming drop).”
They aren’t the first to make use of such talismanic trinkets. Nor would they be the last. “I personally own Hermès tarot cards,” opines Kerry Pieri, content creator and former fashion editor at Harper’s Bazaar.
And astrology has remained a running theme at Dior, beginning with Monsieur Dior’s fascination for tarot readers when his sister was confined to a concentration camp (the astrologically significant numbers 8 and 13 features in the couturier’s first collection starring 13 models on the 8th of October in the 8th arrondissement of Paris), all the way up to the recently-departed Maria Grazia Chiuri’s modern interpretations of the tarot deck.
The mysticism extends to the infusion of crystals in fine jewelry by brands like Jia Jia and Ananya, but also across the range of bag-charms offered by labels like Sage & Salt, whose evil-eye amulets adorn (and protect) your Birkins and Kellys from the “silent judgments that are beams of energy that can build up and change our energy,” as founder Corbin Chamberlin confides.
Even the viral Labubu is a riff on the mischievous-yet-kind elves of Nordic folklore, devised by Hong Kong-born artist and illustrator Kasing Lung for his story The Monsters. And in conjunction with those prayer beads and jingly-jangly keychains on Ms. Birkin’s original Birkin, these charms ground us in a world that feels increasingly mercurial, just as a talisman does!
On Symbols and Symbolism
Hag. Originally used 800 years ago as a term for “a witch or a woman thought to have dealings with the devil,” Batsheva Hay repurposed the word for her Fall 2024 runway presentation. Ms. Hay, 42, resonates with the word in an industry dominated by younger contemporaries: “It kind of felt liberating to come out as a hag.”
Of course, superstitions are all about symbolism. And sometimes these symbols end up as self-fulfilling prophecies: that Birkin on the floor is, at the end of the day, an easier target for potential pilferers!
Correspondingly, a 1954 study by Gustav Jahoda tapped into the notion of Monday-born boys as even-keeled and Wednesday-born boys as aggressive by cross-referencing juvenile court records. Subsequently, the study discovered that parental messaging and groupthink really actuated the phenomenon.
Perhaps that is why there’s some delightful perversion to occasionally subverting such superstitions. Be it Batsheva’s reclaiming of the potent profanity of “Hag”, or Miuccia Prada’s rebellion on the runway against the age-old adage of not leaving your handbag open in plain sight, it simply helps to remember at times that those superstitions are ultimately just that: superstitions.
Must you stop buying vintage for the risk of the previous owner’s potentially unresolved karma, or should you stop stuffing your satchels to the brim as some archaic aphorism would have you believe? If you wish to, sure.
But it’s not for nothing that the gods of ancient times were depicted holding handbags symbolic of the cosmos—our purses, after all, are our universes!
Superstitions aside putting a handbag on the ground is just gross! Imagine eating lunch at an outdoor cafe where dogs have urinated and defecated on the sidewalk or people get drunk and throw up, etc. Also, places where crowds of people have walked and spilled whatever, and then someone sets their bag on the floor or ground? No, I never have and never will.
Sajid strikes again!
A friend of mine is a devout Hermès fan but neither buys nor owns any reptile Birkins or any other reptile bags, as she was born in the Year of the Snake!
My grandmother told us if you allow your purse (handbag) to touch the floor that all of your money would fall out. Needless to say, I do not allow my bag to touch the ground/floor.
Same. Putting a bag on the floor is disgusting but even at home I never do it because of this superstition.. When my husband or son do it drives me crazy. I wonder the origin of this belief?