True fashion is rarely frivolous. While some items prize aesthetics and ornament more than others, objects of fashion are always imbued with meaning. This meaning, whether emotionally ascribed or historically determined, is what makes fashion precious, an art to be studied. Visual codes unlock the richness of fashion, each design, material, and color conveying a hidden history.
How we dress and accessorize ourselves, therefore, often reflects the culture at large. It is sometimes only when the flurry of the present moment settles that this meaning jumps out at us and the why behind a fashion finally clicks. One such accessory is the minaudière, an iteration of the traditional evening bag that gained popularity with women in the early 1930s.
With compartments for concealing objects such as a lipstick, cigarette case, powder compact, and mirror, the interior of the clutch was equally considered as the exterior. The idea of a portable vanity case was not new when the French jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels launched the first official minaudière in 1933, making it widely popular.¹ An updated version of the 1920s vanity case, the functional clutch was considered a piece of transformable jewelry, as decorative as it was functional. Unlike traditional evening bags that were soft-sided and had a wrist or shoulder strap, these were truly structural pieces, rectangular or oblong, and were made from precious materials like gold or silver.
The word “minaudière” translates to “coquettish” women in French, a playful nod to the social, out-on-the-town women who carried them.² With vanity cases and evening clutches taking hold during the flapper era of the 1920s, the minaudière’s rise to popularity mirrored the ascent of the contemporary woman following World War I. The flapper was the embodiment of the jazz age, a fashion and freedom forward image of womanhood that helped to define the twentieth century woman, even after the glitz and glamour of the roaring twenties petered out.³
The burgeoning independence of women in political and social life largely influenced the design of clutches and evening bags of the era.⁴ Much like the laptop tote bag is today’s marker of the corporate, working woman, the minaudière was a symbol of the autonomous, socially active woman in touch with her feminine image.
Perhaps a precursor to the minaudière was the eighteenth-century necessaries de poche (pocket necessities) — small, ornate cases that held personal grooming tools. For both men and women, they were made of precious materials and were surprisingly intricate for their petite size. Compared to the typically plastic or cloth travel cases we pack in our suitcases today, these cases were quite opulent. It was not uncommon to discover one made of wood, tortoiseshell and gold, with glass and ivory tools.⁵ Just as the minaudière could be adorned with jewels or intricately engraved, the necessaires de poche espoused luxury.
The precious accessories we adorn ourselves with reflect our outer world and interior selves. Our own desires and tastes collide with the currents of the world at large. Opening a vintage minaudiere reveals the tiny treasures people carried and held close to themselves. The bag acts as a time capsule for an era, a way of entering and admiring the past. We might almost reach out and share in the emotion of a woman a century ago. She’s preparing to step out into a glittering New York City night, her gold minaudiere brand new and neatly packed.