But how has the bag physically changed from

Next time you're in Seoul, between demonstration shopping and chowing down on samgyupsal, make sure to find some time to visit the Simone Bag Museum, which opens next month in the Gangnam region. An accumulation over 300 historical purses from the 16th century for this, the museum is the passion project of frequent bag producer Kenny Park, who wanted to manufacture a permanent — and quite detailed — archive for the most ubiquitous of women's accessories. He hired Judith Clark, renowned curator of fashion history displays, to organize the collection. Clark spent the last two years with a team of academics and curators excavating numerous kinds of purses from all over the world for the museum and a related book, published by Yale University Press.

Most of the collection is of Western european origin, with a scattering of contemporary bags from the States. The museum focuses less on the trends of "it" bags, and more on what the role of specific kinds of purses contributed to female identity. "These purses were used for dramatically different purposes than how they are used today. Some were for carrying smelling herbs or 'sweetmeats' — sweets — and then money. The bag displayed the emancipation of women — they made it possible to finally spend some money, gaining more freedom over the years, inch Clark said in an interview. "The idea of 'labels' and 'it bags' is a 20th-century phenomenon, coinciding with the rise of the cult of the designer. inch

But how has the bag physically changed from a 16th-century sweetmeat or late 17th-century man made fibre Limoges wedding planning purse, to today's, say, Céline Suitcases bag? "The biggest difference is the size. Everything has exploded increasingly over the years. Also, there are wonderful trajectories of the typology of bag that were discovered through this research; you could see sales reps of certain styles and shapes in numerous decades, as well as revivals. inch The most interesting area of the collection is the quality of craftsmanship that barely survives in our purses. "Some techniques and materials, like fine beading, do not exist. For instance, sablé beading, which was a strategy that used drops as small as grains of sand, produced some skillfully stitched bags. This would be completely beyond contemporary skills today. inch While the museum plans to constantly update its archive, Clark knows there will be limitations. "For historic bags, it's all about success. It's a rather magical process — there are probably many kinds of bags that existed in the past, but they could remain totally unknown forever depending on how they were preserved, inch says Clark.