Bagged out in Amsterdam

While in Amsterdam this month - where I spent a relaxing week cavorting like a local with a BF who now lives there - I hit the Tassenmuseum, also known as the Museum of Bags and Purses. You could say it's like Mecca for fashionable women.


The museum catalogues the history of the Western purse back to the days when it served both men and women. (That's right, the 'murse' goes much further back than Seinfeld.) Hard to imagine the days when you needed a purse for your embroidery tools and not your iPhone, but these are the things you'll enjoy discovering.


The collection spans 500 years, all the way up to the modern day Birkin. The museum is housed in a stunning canalhouse that dates back to the 1600's and used to house the city's mayor. If you have time, go for high tea, like we did. Thankfully I don't have to travel far for the shoe museum, located in my own backyard. Perhaps it's time for high tea with my local BF's and a trip to the Bata.


Side note -- if you find yourself in Paris instead, check out Colette's window display celebrating 15 years of Fendi's baguette bag. 

High tea at Amsterdam's Tassenmuseum

Luxury or shock value?

Judith Leiber's Socks, made famous on Sex and the City 

Why the face?!

STORY UPDATE: Love this!

The 1920's Are Still in Vogue

It's fitting that the Bata Shoe Museum opened its latest exhibit weeks before a general election in Canada. After all, the new exhibit The Roaring Twenties: Heels, Hemlines & High Spirits highlights shoes from one of the most important historical eras for women. By the start of the decade women around the world had finally achieved the right to vote. Soon their right to choose extended to their bodies too, as an initiative that would become Planned Parenthood legally opened in 1921.

The story of the Bata Shoe Museum is a fascinating one (you can check it out here). In total there are over 13,000 items filling the museum's permanent collection. Founding chairman, Sonja Bata, welcomed the crowds and worked the room at the exhibit's opening night cocktail reception. Her wit was on full display too, noting she was born in the 20's but doesn't remember anything.

Bata Shoe Museum curator, Elizabeth Semmelhack, pointed out the stark difference between a woman's dress in the 'teens and the 1920s. Essentially, with freedom, women's fashion was born. Menswear and sportswear trends quickly followed. So did couture. It would be another decade before shoes with peep toes would appear. Oh, if they could see us now.

Special thanks to FASHION magazine for co-hosting the lovely reception.

With freedom came fashion

Menswear influenced ladies' "sporting togs"

Women's summer wear shoes wouldn't show toe for another decade

The cloche hat was as popular as the new bobbed hairstyle

If only our shoes could travel this way now