The Must-Have Party Bag of the Season Is a Throwback to Grace Kelly’s Wardrobe
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News flash: Carrying an evening bag with a clasp, a bag that closes with a nice satisfying clunk, does not have to make you look like Queen Elizabeth. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the monarch is 93 years old, and you are not.) The clasp bag, also sometimes known as the lady bag, is actually a gorgeous item and can provide a welcome infusion of much-needed style to your sagging winter wardrobe. Plus a clasp bag is practical! It’s almost always big enough to conceal your iPhone 11 while still small enough to provide instant glamour, especially after you replace your itchy, bulky sweater with a shimmery camisole.
Don’t believe us? Think of Grace Kelly as Lisa Carol Fremont in Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window, with her stunning clasp Mark Cross bag (the company still makes a version), flouncing around in her Edith Head creations, the height of midcentury-modern chic, solving a murder and saying to Jimmy Stewart, “I’m in love with you. I don’t care what you do for a living. I’d just like to be part of it somehow.... I guess I’m not the girl I thought I was.”
Are you the girl we think you are? If so, you will happily flaunt a flapper-worthy, fringy, metallic Paco Rabanne evening number or work a shimmery Clare V purse or a zebra-striped extravagance—to pair with a little black dress—from Charles Keith. Swing a clasp handbag from your wrist and you can say, as Grace said to Jimmy so long ago: “Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s how to wear the proper clothes.”
