Make your own unique and stylish bags, from vintage silk evening purses to funky painted canvas shoppers for the market.

This do-it-yourself book for stylish handbags features 25 projects with more than 500 illustrations. Sewers of all skill levels will gather the information they need to create many kinds of bags, from casual to romantic, as well as ideas for jazzing up your old bags. Handbag styles include clutches, totes, makeup cases, and a roll-up pencil case. They're made with a variety of styles, including lovely vintage, charming felt, and '80s graphics designs. Chapters include adding accessories and prints to your bags, and each section ends with an interview with a handbag designer. A wealth of tips and information is also provided for adding zippers, making the perfect lining, developing your own variation of the handbag model, and enlarging and copying design patterns and templates. See how creating your own handbag can be fun and rewarding, and also fashion-forward.

This comprehensive new book celebrates over 550 top quality handbags by leading and unknown designers the world over, dating from 1759 to 2004, with detailed information to describe their outstanding qualities. These carefully selected handbags are arranged by their primary materials and chronologically within each chapter, for easy reference and interesting comparisons. Here fine leather, fabric, metal, beaded, skin, and plastic handbags from all over Europe, England, Canada, The United States, and Asia appear in over 600 beautiful color photographs. Examples appear from the design houses of Adele Handbags, Asprey, Bergdorf Goodman, Bonnie Cashin for Coach, Cartier, Chanel, Coblentz, Collins of Texas, deLillo, Elizabeth Arden, Emilio Pucci, Fendi, Givenchy, Gucci, Halston, Hermes, I. Miller, Joret, Judith Lieber, Keiselstein-Cort, Llewellen, Mandalian, Mark Cross, Marvel, Nettie Rosenstein, Patricia of Miami, Pierre Cardin, Raoul Calabro, Rialto, Roger Van S., Ronay, Rosenfeld, sydney love, Tiffany, Tropic, Tyrolean, Virginia Merrill, Viva, Whiting & Davis Co., Wilardy Original, Zandra Rhodes, and many more. An extensive Glossary, informative Resources section, Bibliography, and Index make this book friendly while instructional, securing an important place in the libraries of fashion historians, vintage clothing buffs, antique dealers, and accessories collectors alike.

Fashionary's Bag Design encyclopedia is the most comprehensive resource for bag designers and bag lovers. Focusing on the specific needs of bag designers, Fashionary has provided essential information on bag anatomy, manafacturing, materials and much more in one compact, convenient volume.

Whether it's the tiny hand-held jewel that holds only a lipstick or the trendy Prada backpack, handbags are our most essential accessory. The ultimate status symbol, bags also speak volumes about our approach to style. This gorgeous book presents the best of contemporary design from the world's leading firms. Ranging from the status bags of Gucci and Hermès to the exquisite beaded purses of Jamin Puech and Nathalie Hambro, and laden with color photos and sketches, Bags: A Lexicon of Style is a must for fashion lovers and those with a sense of bags as art. Valerie Steele is Chief Curator of The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Among her books are The Corset: A Cultural History, Paris Fashion, Fetish, and Fifty Years of Fashion. Laird Borrelli, a fashion historian, also works at The Museum at F.I.T.

"Whether it is a behind-the-scenes look at how these classic styles came to be or taking a front-seat look at how iconic women taught us how what it means to accessorize, this is a must-have for fashion lovers." -- BELLA magazine. Women love handbags because they are a perfect vehicle -- not just for keys, credit cards, and lipstick, but also their dreams and desires. Luxury labels made the humble bag into a billion-dollar business in the 20th century, but the bag is more than just a status symbol. Because it is constantly being reinvented, it wields a greater influence on everyday fashion than any hemline or silhouette. For the Love of Bags is a homage to the power of the handbag: from icons like the Kelly Bag, the first "must-have" item ever, to popular Paris fashion house labels and the latest Instagram stars, this book details the history of the "it" bag and decodes the messages handbags communicate. Text in English, German and French.

The counterpart to Shoes, from acclaimed fashion historian Valerie Steele.