You might think of the purse as a pretty modern invention. Not so! People have needed to carry their crap around for millennia, both women & men. Here are some nifty purses to inspire your next project.
The sizes & shapes of purses change, but the need to stash a few things on the body doesn’t. Extant purses go back to the middle ages, & bags can be found in portraits & fashion plates all over the place if you look hard enough. Need more? Download this PDF (94.2MB) from a class I taught several years ago at Costume College — it’s an annotated visual overview of purses from the 1200s to the 1950s.