Come on if you think you're hard enough ...
When Coco Chanel launched her classic quilted handbag in 1955 she did not, so far as we know, describe the long leather strap that slinked through its gilt links as hardware. It was simply, she said, a means by which women could carry all they needed and keep their hands free. She could not have known that her legendary design would prove to be the precursor to the mass of heavy-metal handbags now weighing down the shelves in every high street accessories department.
You do not have to look far to see the hardware trend at work. You can even, without straining too hard, hear it coming along the street as all those brassy clips, clasps, buckles and rings swing and chime in collision. Gritty zips bare giant teeth. Chains rattle. Fobs, tabs and tassles shake. These are the 4x4s of the handbag world: ungracious on the pavement, heavy to handle, their glint and steel the equivalent of an oversized grille and bumper.
In purely fashion terms, it is easy to see why this is happening now. The punkish overtones fit with other elements of an 80s revival (sweater dresses, ankle boots, leggings), and over the past few seasons boisterous bags have offset the softer edges of a predominantly feminine silhouette, all curvy skirts and soft ruffles. But look beyond fashion and another, darker reason for the metallic leer of our handbags emerges.
"There seems to be an allusion to security and surveillance," says Alice Rawsthorn, design critic of the International Herald Tribune. "There have often been little baby padlocks on bags - Hermès, Prada, for instance - but on these new bags the hardware has been blown up, grossly exaggerated in allusion to all the paraphernalia of security. They are sinister and ungainly. There is more metal than leather on some. They are bags as weapons."
If that sounds far-fetched, consider this. The distinguishing mark of Chloé's bestselling Paddington bag, launched in September 2004, is the chunky gilt padlock that stands guard over the front pocket. Marc Jacobs' hit Stam bag, which went on sale last year, can be identified by the chain that swings from its handle. While its quilted leather nods to Chanel's classic bag, this chain is too heavy to look entirely harmless. Now the hardware is hardening further. For £425 it is possible to buy a bag by BE&D, from Harvey Nichols, covered in the sort of spiky studs that normally decorate a knuckle duster. Even Armani, a house known for its timelessness, has this season produced a bag whose exaggerated decorative links look like interlocking handcuffs. Gucci has gone further still, its glittering clutch encased safe-like in a riveted metallic trim while a chain hooks the bag to the wearer's wrist: the handcuff is no longer an allusion but a matter of fact. Handbag designers, it seems, are responding to a world that feels less safe post 9/11.
It was the launch of the Mulberry Roxanne in October 2003 that signalled the moment, says Harriet Quick, features editor of Vogue, "when the trend for substantial hardware really kicked off". The Roxanne was so swiftly taken to hearts that it fast became known as the Roxy. Kate Moss was among the first to order it. Even if you don't know its name you will almost certainly have seen it at her side in paparazzi pictures. The Roxanne was unlike anything else on sale at the time. It had (and still has, for at £595 it continues to be a bestseller) 62 exposed rivets, five faux buckles, six rings that hoop its various straps and, empty, weighed 1.4kg. Everything about it was extrinsically expressive, from the stand-out pockets to buckle straps that licked outwards.
And yet there was a different impulse at work in the Roxanne compared with the aggressive hardware of its successors. What it did not have was a logo - unless you knew where to look, in the tiny indented flecks that speckled into the shape of the mulberry tree on every one of those rivets. It was, Quick says, "a reaction to the logo mania of the first part of the noughties - canvas [bags] that had to have a logo all over, leather that was embossed".
Today hardware has replaced logo as the single identifying characteristic of the bag - creating, says Quick, "a new kind of signature with the hardware itself". The Chloé Paddington's padlock, the chain of the Marc Jacobs Stam, the "postman's lock" on the Mulberry leatherware have become the means by which the bags are identified. Hardware confers status. The clasp of the Paddington is not only the bag's signature but a wry nod to its expense (around £790 for a tote). This bag costs so much, it seems to say, I need to keep it under lock and key. And while Stuart Vevers, creative director at Mulberry, still sees hardware as a "subtle status symbol", it can be far from subtle. Emblazoned on the front of Gucci's clutchbag with cuff is the double "G" of its logo, just like the maker's badge on the boot of a 4x4. "The irony," notes Rawsthorn, "is that in an era of mounting street crime, nothing screams 'this bag is eminently stealable' more than all that hardware."
Perhaps it is not so surprising that emblems of personal and international security have found their way into fashion. Anna Wintour, editor of US Vogue, commented recently on "a much darker, more aggressive [aesthetic] ... that I believe can only be the result of the darkening political climate". Before fashion got hold of it, of course, the word "hardware" was more commonly used to denote heavy military equipment. Maybe things have not changed so much after all; even Chanel, with such practical ambitions for her classic bag, is thought to have been inspired by soldiers' rucksacks.
Source: guardian.co.uk
