What Does Your Purse Look Like?

Browsing around the web today I stumbled on an article I thought would be interesting: Fourteen Things Your Handbag Shouldn't Look Like. Rather than laughing out loud at some ridiculous bags I was shocked to discover I resembled the subject matter of the piece. In fact it wasn't too long ago I was in search of a Chinese food container shaped purse.

On any given day you can find me toting around Elvis on a stiletto heel shoe bottom, a quilted Elvis, a needle point and brass knuckle enhancer, a cigar box covered with floral photographs and puzzle pieces, or my husband's grandmother's Sunday- Go-To-Meeting brown leather hard formed bag with tiny locking clasp top from the fifties. I had one that was alternating black and white quadrants on either side sewn into a ball. I've had the bustier in black with red ribbon and pink with black ribbon and lace trim. I've got one I made out of a cigar box with Joe Bonamassa on it and one from a year later with me and Joe Bonamassa standing by the bus on it. I've made one with bugs around the edge and a giant Jackson's chameleon snipped from the pages of Kids National Geographic decoupaged on one side.

Sometimes there is just no accounting for taste. I love to wear something totally expected and then add a crazy purse or some sort of wild shoe because it should be fun. Your outfit should say something about who you are. The black pencil skirt with the pink cardigan sweater and sensibly heeled pizza toe shoes with stitched details needed something that said this is not from my mothers closet when she was a teenager. It needed the high heeled pink Elvis purse.

I would rock out a guitar shaped purse on my way to see my next Goo Goo Dolls concert. I'd wear it with my pink and black Chuck Taylor's ripped up jeans and homemade concert t-shirt. I might even fling a biker inspired jacket on and sling it across my body like a real guitar would hang on its strap. I'd do it because on that day, at that moment, that's who I was.

Though I can honestly say I have never had occasion to want a plush puppy or an armadillo bag if I could find a hardcover version of a Hardy Boys novel with Shawn Cassidy on the cover you better believe I'd turn it into a purse and wear it out. I would use the pea coat version for every day even though I find rather classic and tame; six black buttons do not a bad bag make. However, the one I would most like is the coffin. It's the perfect accessory for Halloween, wakes, and funerals as far as I'm concerned. And believe me if I ever see the type writer keys or cassette tape when I'm at a store I am going to own them!

In a world that runs at a million miles an hour; where people worry about blending into the crowd and give way too much credence to self proclaimed experts on every subject under the sun as they tell you what you should eat, wear, drive, and smell like someone needs to take a moment and let her freak flag fly in memory of all the individuality that we've spent so much time squelching in the name of social acceptance. Mine flies in the form of a purse, or polka dot sneakers, or checkered sunglasses with mirrored lenses and holographic peace signs. It doesn't mean I don't know what the fashion guru's are mandating as the look for this season. It means I just don't give a damn.

Be safe.