From totes to Birkins, handbags hold the keys to the world (along with your wallet and phone)

For many of us, handbags are an essential part of our lives. They allow us to leave the house with everything we need, and they also can be another place to show off our status or style. This hour, we look at the evolution of the handbag. We'll talk about famous "It Bags", how handbags contributed to human development, and the impact of the Walmart "Birkin."

GUESTS: 

• Nancy MacDonell: Fashion journalist and fashion historian. She writes the Wall Street Journal column "Fashion with a Past.” Her new book is Empresses of Seventh Avenue: World War II, New York City, and the Birth of American Fashion

• Hannah Carlson: Senior Lecturer in the Apparel Department at the Rhode Island School of Design. She’s also the author of Pockets: An Intimate History of How We Keep Things Close

• Audrey Wollen: Book critic and writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's, The New York Review of Books and other outlets. Her article “A Unified Theory of the Handbag” recently appeared in The Yale Review

• Aarushi Bhandari: An Assistant Professor of Sociology at Davidson College. Her new book is Attention and Alienation

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Colin McEnroe and Dylan Reyes contributed to this show, which originally aired on June 4, 2025.

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