Sweet & Candy Piano Pink Handbag

How the 28x24 cm format shapes this printed handbag

Almost square is unusual for a handbag, and it changes what you notice first. With four centimetres between its two measurements, the 28x24 cm panel stays flat enough that you take in the illustration end to end rather than lose half of it in a fold. Brown sides and edges run the whole way round, white stitching follows every seam, and the top corners carry domed gold rivets. The other short-handled bags on the same shelf are worth comparing on exactly those points.

Brown handles, gold rivets and a thin side strap

Two rigid brown handles stitched in white hold their arc even when the bag is set down, so your hand finds them without straightening anything first. Each is fixed by a tab and a domed gold rivet. A matching tab on either side takes a thin strap, which moves the bag onto your hip and leaves both hands free. If that is how you tend to carry, bags built for the shoulder first make up a shelf of their own.

A girl at a grand piano across the front panel

The front is a picture before it is a bag. A girl sits with her back to you at a black grand piano, chestnut plait tied with a pink ribbon, ruffled dress, sheet music open on the stand. A white and ginger cat in a flower crown has settled on the lid. Around them the illustration piles up butterflies, clock faces, feathers, an envelope and lines of handwriting over a faded pink ground. A plain powder-pink band closes the top of the panel, marked with a cursive logo in aged gold metal.

The zipped pocket on the butterfly-print back

Turn the bag over and the design starts again. Butterflies in several colours and mauve thistles cover the back, and a large brick-brown patch pocket sits on top of them, closed by a horizontal zip with a gold pull. What reads as a signature there, a line of white handwriting beside a round embossed medallion, is printed decoration and nothing more. The pocket itself opens and shuts without disturbing the rest of the bag.

Living with a pale printed bag

A pale ground shows marks sooner than a dark one, so ordinary dust is a job for a soft cloth, barely damp, wiped rather than rubbed. Direct light is the other thing to watch: it takes the colour out of an illustration faster than handling ever does. Store the bag standing rather than flat, and run the zip on the back pocket every so often so it does not stiffen where it sits unused.