Now That's Clutch

While spending a down-to-earth weekend reading the January edition of Elle, I found myself becoming more and more grateful for the return of the minimalist movement, which emerged in the early 1990s fashion world, but was then replaced by oodles of bows and most dramatically bags the size of a small second grader. Do I care about sleek lines and a white and black color palette? Well, that's irrelevant since 2008's minimalism includes vibrant color and movement-friendly material. But what I am happy to see is the return of smaller handbags, most notably the clutch.

You see, large bags was a trend I had a love-hate relationship with. I'm not for carrying your life around in a bag, essentially because I forget my life is in there and either a) lose track of it or b) spend hours looking for my keys when they're merely sitting quietly in the dark abyss that is my purse. I grew up with a mother who did indeed carry her life in her purse, but she went to the other extreme - pulling a Mary Poppins and stuffing that life in a smaller-than-thou purse "so as not to have as much to carry". Picking up her small ladies woven bag felt like picking up a brick, and it was even more impossible to sift through. But alas, I digress.

The point of the matter is, I did adopt the large bag trend - I just never really carried that much around in it. Granted it made for fashionable entrances into the few college classrooms I actually forced myself to attend - a bag large enough to carry a laptop, textbooks, and a giant smoothie is my friend any day. But for the most part I never carried anything around in it, and found myself carrying a bag for the sake of a bag. I once had a bouncer laugh at me during a bag check - I came in carrying a huge black beauty, but you open it up and the only thing in the bottom was an ID.

Upon my move to NY I did discover one swell reason to carry around a trash bag sized Hobo. With throngs of tourists, lost, confused, and impeding upon your scurry to work (some people in NY are here for more than the little sidewalk pretzels) it's nice to be able to barrell through, my bag charging ahead like a pioneer colt rifle, ready to take on anything that's in my way.

But going back to the hand-held, light-weight, cute as a button bag that can carry all I really need without bringing along all of that other...baggage? Now that's clutch.