From gloss and glamour to loss and clamour …

The problem with handbags is the following: you overload! Overloading usually results in excessive digging, meaning that at crucial moments you are absolutely unable to come up with the object needed, as for example, your favourite lipstick. Rumour says that even feminists have been caught in the act of emptying the contents of their bags on a car roof or a tiny French bistro table. Needless to say that from both locations their handbag intimacies invariably slide or drop down to some grimy ground which will give any woman a serious fit. A jam-packed handbag is always prone to accidents as, e.g., by rupture of wafer-thin, fancy bag straps, by the breaking away of shiny snap hooks or the splitting open of glitzy metal rings. The effect is always the same, your handbag will drop down from your shoulder like a stone. Big drama! You need impro!

 

When taking out my classic blue Life Handbag on a rainy Oxford day, a snap hook drama struck right on Broad Street. Bang! Solutions had to be found quickly! As clutching a well-packed handbag for longer than twenty minutes is unacceptable, I first tried sticky tape, which proved to be unsuitable and led to another clamorous downfall. After searching a number of shops in vain for something to fix the snap hook, a helpful shop assistent in a charming craft store finally found me some hellish Super Glu which I administered on the disfunctional hook very carefully while riding the Oxford Tube to London. In the process, I had to unpack the contents of my handbag on the empty neighbouring seat and – gosh- what freaky objects did I find in my handbag! And – gosh – where were all those unsuspiciuous objects I actully had supposed to dig up from the depth of my bag? I suddenly understood: My life chance of a ‘What-is-in-my-bag’ – photo event had come! And here we go.

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A visual presentation of “Whatsinmybag” is a big challenge because those rather profane private belongings which are brought to daylight mostly lack gloss and glamour. So the way of arranging the profanities in the shooting is imperial. On my comfortable Oxford Tube the location was dominated by the wildly patterned orange seat covers, a circumstance I had to submit to and therefore embraced as a neo-realistic, anti-lifestyle message to the world. YES, no lying about the contents in my bag! YES, I crossed my fingers after writing the last sentence! YES, the objects lack gloss and glamour! YES, my bag tells you stories of loss and clamour! YES, the myth of my handbag is flamboyant! NO, I won’t share my secrets!

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