Exhibit totes purses through time, styles

• By ROBIN MILLER
• Arts writer
• Published: Jun 21, 2009

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And here we have the Edwardian Matron. She models a no-label purse from the early 19th century, its handle detailed with art nouveau etching.

She is followed by The Carefree Flapper whose boyish silhouette is paired with this 1920 peacock feather patterned beaded handbag. Again, there is no label.

Next, we have the Art Deco Lady of the 1930s.

What? You want Vitton, Prada and Chanel? Doomey & Bourke? Well, you have some waiting to do.

Those names don’t pop up until the 1980s and 1990s, and the runway is just now entering the 1930s, where, by the way, purses give fuller free expression to a new aesthetic sensibility.

The stark geometry of the art deco movement had taken the nation by storm, and purses often took on the new deco shapes. But again, no labels here.

Sigh.

“You’ll see this throughout the 20th century,” Elizabeth Weinstein said.

She’s not the runway narrator. Then again, maybe she is.

Weinstein is curator at the Louisiana Art & Science Museum. She’s the person who arranged this exhibit.

But this is more than a museum show. Call it a runway through time, a showcase of a century’s worth of women’s style by way of their purses.

And their personalities through the contents of those purses.

So, you not only take in the fashion but the fashionistas, as well. In a way, it’s reflective of the current exhibit The Model as Muse showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.