5 Handbag Tips

1.  “It’s all about quality and craftsmanship.”
The first rule is the most important to keep in mind when shopping for a bag you’ll carry for the long haul.  You really do get what you pay for when it comes to the quality.  To ensure a lasting investment, seek out fine materials such as leather and crocodile only get better with age.

2.  “Look for a classic shape.”
A handbag is a functional accessory, so you must remember to choose one that really works.  “Are you a clutch woman?”  If so, invest in a classic clutch.  If not, go with a top handle, a shoulder bag or whichever shape suits you best.  After all, the perfect bag isn’t really perfect if you find it too large, too small or too uncomfortable. 

3.  Choose “classic hardware”.
Often, the smallest details – a clasp, a chain – pose the biggest questions when it comes to this decision.  Clarify the matter in one simple sentence:  “Many times in fashion, you’ll find metal finishes that come and go with the trends, but classic silver always looks right, [or] certainly a classic gold detail.”  In other words, think long and hard before spending a mint on bronze or copper or other passing fancies.

4.  Color is key.
“Many times, the color of the moment is just that,” instead gravitate toward bags in shades that will stand the test of time.  Favor black, chocolate, tobacco and natural leather tones, but even bone, navy and “the pop of a brilliant red” can be considered basics. 

5.  “Buy a handbag that you are passionate about.”
Finally, a handbag must not only check all the right boxes in order to qualify for your collection – it must also quicken your pulse.  If you’re truly passionate about the bag the day that you buy it…you will love it forever.

Bags of Style

Kate Moss is sitting on the bed, surrounded by bags: zebra-patterned purses to fortify her “wild girl” reputation; shoulder bags to match her ever-youthful, hip look; and a sturdy tote, appropriately named Gloucester, for her oh-so-English country home.

“I am not doing it for different personalities — it’s what I like,” says Ms. Moss — or Kate, as she is known. At age 36, she has taken another step in her second life, as a designer rather than as a supermodel using her pretty face and sensual lips to promote other brands.

Her new collaboration with the bag company Longchamp grew from the advertising campaigns that she has done with the French leather house for eight seasons. The range has her personal label “Kate Moss for Longchamp” and uses images of the model at her most sultry, with end-of-a-long-night poses, hair tumbled and clothes misplaced as she cradles the bags.

The real Kate is funny, witty, down to earth and with a clear vision about this next step in her career. “I know bags, and I always want a bag to be functional and comfortable to hold,” she says, flipping the practical double handles of a small shoulder purse.

“As a woman with a lot of handbags, they have got to have a bit of flair, not too ‘Lady,’ with a bit of an edge,” she adds. “And it’s really important that Longchamp is an old family company — old school. They know how to make bags.”

First came the dreams. As with the clothing range she designs for TopShop, she turned to the favorites in her closet, “like a kind of dream world — you can perfect things you had in the past.”

Another dream for the rock ’n’ roll model is being in the 1960s and ’70s, “hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, Marc Bolan and Rod Stewart, when the men dressed so well — Brian Eno, that look he had was major.”

There is also the romantic Kate, the one who fell in love with the bias-cut dress that John Galliano gave her for her 21st birthday.

“I would have loved to have been a flapper girl in the ’20s and ’30s, dancing around with Cocteau and Scott Fitzgerald in Paris,” she says.

The reality of being a mother of a 7-year-old daughter, Lila Grace, and of working and traveling is that the Moss collection needs more than the elegant shagreen purses inspired by the antique boxes she has collected.

Sophie Delafontaine, creative director of Longchamp and granddaughter of its founder Jean Cassegrain, explains how a visit to Kate’s London home helped them to develop the wide range of bags that is intended to be a continuing project with the company, rather than the one-season collaborations it has had with the artist Tracey Emin and the architect Thomas Heatherwick.

For Kate herself, the inspiration might be a vintage object, like the zebra Gucci travel bag that she saw in Los Angeles for $55,000 and which her partner Jamie Hince finally tracked down in San Francisco, enabling her to imagine the glam world of Elizabeth Taylor, when luggage was carried by porters and “didn’t touch the floor.”

Making purses lighter so they won't be a pain in the neck

Shelley White is shopping for a handbag that's stylish but – literally – isn't a pain in the neck. The handbag needs to be lightweight and compact but still roomy enough for her iPhone, twin toddlers' toys, snacks, diapers, lipstick, keys, wallet, even a netbook.

“It's the issue of my back and my neck,” says Ms. White, 37, a TV producer in Toronto. “I find there's some strain. I want something that's going to feel good.”

The shift among women like Ms. White, who have suffered neck and back pain from lugging about chic, oversized handbags, are giving manufacturers and retailers hope for a comeback in sales in a sector pinched by the recession.

The purchase of a new purse was something that could easily be put off, particularly in an economic slump. But smaller and lighter gadgets, such as smart phones and netbooks, and a shift among celebrities such as Victoria Beckham to smaller bags, is giving the purse a new feel.

“Designers are definitely working toward lighter bags, with lighter materials as well as hardware,” says Eileen Lewis, fashion strategy director at Zappos.com, a giant online seller of shoes and bags in Henderson, Nev. “Designers are making bags that are compact, but that carry a lot and have lots of organization.”

New British research highlights the shift. Debenhams PLC has found that the weight of handbags has dropped 57 per cent to 1.5 kilograms over the past two years.

That's with phones, keys, wallets, etc. included.That's roughly the equivalent of two loaves of bread, compared to a peak of 3.5 kg, or the weight of more than three bags of sugar, in 2007.

Debenhams, a department store giant, found that the introduction of multipurpose devices, such as the iPhone and BlackBerry, has helped lower the weight of what's inside a handbag.

“Finally, the burden placed upon working women is falling,” says Sue Tebbitts, handbag buyer at Debenhams.

Celebrities: Did they really say that?

A limo ride with Bono, chats with each of his U2 bandmates, country cutie Keith Urban sending yours truly a book with a note the day after our talk ... Indeed, 2009 proved to be one exceptional year of chinwags for music critic Jane Stevenson. Here's the best of what they had to say:

"I'd like to have a foursome with them!"
-- Lady Gaga on MuchMusic Video Awards hosts and fellow performers, The Jonas Brothers

"Jesus and the gays."
-- Lady Gaga on her style inspirations

"If I have to roll up a joint and have a beer in order to get (my audience) to really talk and listen to some real ideas -- then so be it."
-- Rapper Asher Roth, who espouses beer bongs, weed and naked girls in his breakthrough party anthem, I Love College

"It's amazing the amount of applause you can get for suggesting the ladies of these towns you are visiting are of loose morals. The weird thing is that it's the girls who are cheering."
-- Elvis Costello

"My life was Trainspotting for a while, remember that movie? THAT was my life ... and it was misery."
-- Hugh Dillon, formerly of the Headstones, and now a sober solo artist and actor

"To be honest with you, by the end, I was pretty much blacked out by noon -- really."
-- Creed singer Scott Stapp on his drug-alcohol mixture issues, which he has since conquered

"I'm not one for being fashionable or seen -- said the guy wearing a big mouse head."
-- Toronto electronica star Deadmau5 (pronounced Deadmouse), who performs in a custom-made, oversized mouse head

"It's good to be at almost the edge of ridiculousness, then venture into doing something creative."
-- Jack White of The White Stripes on recording with his second side band, The Dead Weather

"I've just been lucky in the body department, as long as you keep the legs out of it."
-- 65-year-old Roger Daltrey on his enviable physique

"I know Noel Gallagher and Liam Gallagher and they always say, 'Oh, man, we wish we were respected like you lads are,' and I think, 'God, I wish I had your millions, mate.' You can't win 'em all, can you?"
-- New Order/Joy Division bassist Peter Hook

"I don't even know why rock musicians should be getting paid more than doctors. It's just entertainment."
-- Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde

"Mr. President says to me, 'I didn't know your husband was Elvis Costello.' ...So it's pretty cool when the president is like, going, 'Oh, my God, your husband is Elvis Costello!' "
-- Diana Krall on her chat with U.S. President Barack Obama

"Some evenings it's like 80,000 people (and it doesn't bother you), and then some evenings it's like, 'F------ hell, it's 80,000 people.'"
-- Robbie Williams on his stage fright

"I buy a lot of handbags. I could have bought a house if I hadn't bought all them handbags."
-- British pop star Adele

"I started to feel maybe like I was a sports car that they were going to put a tarp on and take a tarp off any time they wanted to. So as an artist, I couldn't really do that."
-- J.D. Fortune on his split from INXS

"Mikey got thrown out of the band ruthlessly ... (Eddie and Alex Van Halen) just cut his throat and threw him out to the side of the road."
-- Sammy Hagar on the firing of Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony

"There's only a couple of other people I can really say that are in my pop field that are (working five nights a week) and that are in the grind. Otherwise, the rest of them are hawking mints and Pro-activ."
-- Katy Perry

"When Bono hears two notes together he hears a song complete. When anyone else hears two notes together, we hear a starting point."
-- Adam Clayton on Bono's hope there will be another U2 album sooner than later

"I wish I had been there! I would have jumped up there and said, 'Give me that microphone! Give that back to her!' "
-- Reba McEntire on Kanye West upstaging Taylor Swift during MTV Video Music Awards

"The first day we met, he was like, 'So what hours do you like to work?' And I was like, 'Friday.' "

-- Robbie Williams on working with noted British producer Trevor Horn

"She sings lines like, 'Bullied, suckered, pimped and patronized,' and makes it sound like a good idea."
-- Dave Gray on the vocal talent of Annie Lennox with whom he recorded the duet, Full Steam

"I hope everybody sells a million records and I sell a million-and-one."
-- 2008 American Idol winner David Cook on 2009 winner Kris Allen and runner-up Adam Lambert

"There were times during the process that I got a little bit irritable and frustrated. He did, too. It's not like I'm some 18-year-old."
-- Harry Connick Jr. on working with Clive Davis on his latest album

"Either you're going to be egotistical, because they're going to blow so much steam (up your you know what), or you're going to want to crawl in a hole and die."
-- Kelly Clarkson on not reading her own press

"Then we all went out to the pub, of course, and got a bit rat-arsed (drunk)."
-- Dolores O' Riordan on what she did after reuniting with her Cranberries in January in Dublin

"I think I've been lazy. I think I've done just as much as I need to make it work."
-- Jann Arden

"There's a reason why they call it anonymous. I don't want to sit and talk about AA in interviews."
-- Country singer Terri Clark, who has been sober for a year

"We get a script writer and they write the same old Carry On Keith lot because it's easy. Basically, they're all f------ lazy."
-- Roger Daltrey on his struggles to get a good script for his long-awaited Keith Moon bio-pic

"I hate to record. It is so tedious and repetitive. I never record anything over three times. They're songs! My God! They aren't cures for cancer. How long does it take to put a song together? It's a song!"
-- Soul singer Bettye LaVette

"(Bruce Allen) said, 'You need to let me manage you. Rumour on the street ... is that you're unmanageable.' And maybe I have been."
-- Jann Arden

"Malcolm is one of my all-time favourite rhythm guitar players. I think he's one of the greatest on the planet. And he never gets any props."
-- Keith Urban on AC/DC's Malcolm Young

"The ease and use of an mp3 and an iPod is all well and good and it's convenient and affordable. But without moving parts I think people are losing the beauty and the romance of music. It's becoming invisible."
-- Jack White, who is bringing vinyl back

"There was too much money and too much stupidity and too much excess. ... I certainly don't feel doom and gloom. I'm delighted that any industry can destroy itself with its own greed."
-- Chrissie Hynde on the record industry