The Bakelite Bag

Introducing our new column, OBJET, in collaboration with our friends at Objet. We’ve asked five writers to write about a single object that is significant to them and will be publishing these essays in the coming months. 

Objet embeds memories into clothing via regular soirées—parties with a French touch—where they invite local tailors to customize your favorite garments. Imagine that piece now, carrying your best moments into the next century. 

If you’re in the Bay Area, the next soirée is Friday, October 4th. Info here.

First up, Marlowe Granados on the cathartic potential of a secondhand bag

In 2017, I was put through the ringer of one of the worst relationships I had ever been in. There were the late-night phone calls from women I had never heard of, and a stranger’s black lace bra I pulled out from under his bed. He had worn me down so thoroughly that my sense of self hung by a string, it would only take a slight gust of wind to set me loose. 

On a particularly harrowing afternoon, I took the day to pull myself together and wandered into a dusty vintage store. Something of a Toronto landmark, I had walked into this shop many times since high school, only buying something once or twice in the last decade. After thumbing through the old Levis and weathered varsity jackets, I noticed a small handbag in the front display case. I recognized it from the year prior. It looked like a metal basket with a caramel-coloured handle and lid. When the salesgirl said a hundred and twenty, I countered, “I know it’s been here for ages, how about eighty?” She shrugged and rang me up. 

The 1950s saw the rise of this style of handbag—sometimes made with lucite, woven brass, or Bakelite. The original makers were in the business of manufacturing plastic parts during World War II. For over a decade, these bags were found in the crook of women’s arms all over the United States from brands like Wilardy and Patricia of Miami. They appealed to women in cities who bought them at department stores, and for those on permanent vacation, who could pick one up at the resort boutique. 

The family of Robert Gottlieb, the famed editor, claims that he had over a thousand of these plastic handbags (only a quarter have been sent to auction so far). Gottlieb writes in A Certain Style, his book dedicated to his collection, that at the time of production these bags were “new and they were fun, but they weren’t serious.” It was why he loved them, something he called an “unselfconscious inventiveness.” 

When I first took mine home, I did the sniff test to check whether the caramel plastic was what I suspected. When put under heat, Bakelite will have a very particular phenol smell. I previously never owned anything Bakelite except a few of my grandmother’s bangles. As a material, I thought it was pretty, but having confirmed the bag was part Bakelite, I enjoyed the proximity the object now had to a salacious history. When I was a teenager, a friend gave me a very pulpy book he’d found at a garage sale that followed the tragic saga of the Baekeland family. Against all odds, that book ended up becoming a film starring Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne. Savage Grace depicts the dysfunction of Barbara Daly Baekeland, the ex-wife to the grandson of Leo Baekeland, the inventor of Bakelite. Think alcoholism, mental illness, alleged incest, and matricide, all with exotic locales such as Antibes as setting. Who knew you could get all that in a handbag?

I’ve always collected old things; I like to think of them as talismans of the past. I don’t just put them on display but use them as they were made to be used. My Bakelite handbag is a little more crooked than when I first got it seven years ago, the bottom is cracked and the lid slightly askew. The handle now squeaks when I carry it—a sign to apply some WD40. Much can be gleaned about someone through the contents of their handbags. Diana Vreeland apparently had her dollar bills and tissues ironed before putting them in hers (I’m so pleased there are always more advanced levels of glamour to aspire to). This particular bag has gone country to country with me, even transatlantic, and has had strange detritus stuffed inside (once, a tiny pineapple plant from Heathrow to LaGuardia).

I certainly like having a design object on my arm. Bakelite bags are rigid but still feminine which feels more analogous to my personality than I feel free admitting, now that I have a collection of nine of them. It’s perhaps eccentric—people often call out to me with abandon “What is that! Is that your purse!” Men stop me the most. They ask to hold it and turn it in their hands with a child-like curiosity. I like that the handbag has stayed with me longer than the residue of that bad relationship. The effects of it now seem so far off, but at the time felt insurmountable. There’s also a sense that whatever it witnessed through my ownership is just a minor chapter in the bag’s life. It holds my secrets but also the mysteries of those that came before me. I can only hope to pass it on as the common thread between me and generations of stylish women. 

NEW IN TASTELAND

The magazine episode! This week Daisy Alioto and Francis Zierer explore the evolution of magazine consumption, the impact of digital media on traditional publishing, and the future of advertising in a rapidly changing landscape.

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