The Most Iconic “What’s In My Bag” Story Happened in 2000
A book that showed the original It girl was one part Kleenex, one part incredible storytelling, and no marketing.
I love the book Contents by Kate and Andy Spade. Although it’s from 2000, the lessons the book teaches live forever. To learn more, I interviewed a few people who worked on the project: Michael Ian Kaye (the art director), Julia Leach (the producer), and Jerry Schwartz (the stylist). Read the full piece below.
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The inside of a woman’s bag is a vulnerable place. Really, few places could be more telling—only maybe your DMs could compete. A handheld cache of necessities and mementos, sometimes crumb-ridden, sometimes glamorously organized, generally somewhere in between. If the bag itself is a projection of how we want to be seen, its contents are a mirror of who we really are. So it’s funny that the best example of the intimate anatomy of a woman’s bag to date happened a near quarter century ago, in Contents, a book Kate and Andy Spade published in 2000.
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