Philippa Stevenson: Just a bag lady in pursuit of a perfect purse

What do women want? It's a question that vexes men. Women too, actually, but there is an acid test that cuts right to the heart of the conundrum.

If a woman can't walk past a shoe shop or if the invisible hand that usually stays the credit card always mysteriously loosens for the latest leather on stilts, then she's a shoe lady.

If the bag shop acts like a magnet then, ipso facto, we have ourselves a bag lady.

Once, there might have been a third category - hats - but hat hair seems to have done for it. So, I'm confident that it's fairly, roughly, probably true that all women fall into one of two camps: shoes or bags.

A bag lady likes shoes and vice versa. But when the choice is between feeding the kids, a nice pair of heels or an arrangement of pockets to die for, rest assured, only one of the latter two will win.

I've always considered myself a thoroughgoing bag lady. I'll always bag the bag, but can resurrect the won't-power on the footwear.

But it took only one Google of handbags to see that I am an uneducated amateur.

Books, websites, surveys, e-zines, art, history, anthropological study - the pursuit of the perfect purse has been going on for centuries, as has a fascination with the fascination.

A little local knowledge: according to a survey on the nzgirl website, 13 per cent of Kiwi women own just one bag, 8 per cent have two, 33 per cent have less than five, 30 per cent have about 10, and 12 per cent have 20 or more.

Presumably the 4 per cent who don't carry a bag at all are either the ultimate shoe women or only ever wear cargo pants.

Bag-lady extraordinaire Henrietta Timmons has the good sense to ask one of the vital questions of our age.

She asks website visitors: Do you think women carry bags by choice or biological destiny? Their responses are almost equally divided - 49 per cent choice, 51 per cent bio-destiny.

They could both be right. Some students of human evolution believe the invention of bags, with their food-carrying capacity, rivals the harnessing of fire for making humankind a planetary success story.

But back to Prada and Gucci.

In the Washington Post this month, Joyce Gemperlein suggested the perfect purse is a woman's Holy Grail. "Many of us think it to be, if not mythical or extinct, utterly elusive."

What (bag) women want, she says, "is a handbag that is attractive and trendy but utilitarian, is a colour that works for every outfit, has the correct shape and the right number of internal pockets, has a shoulder strap for hands-free utility but doesn't bump constantly into the hip when it swings, is water- and stain-proof in case of dew and dirt on a soccer field, and looks expensive (or at least doesn't look cheesy).

It must be large enough to carry everything we need, but not so big as to tempt us into carrying, say, a candelabrum, or anything heavy enough to force an appointment with the chiropractor."

Helping us out in this eternal search is an ever-growing retail sector. In New Zealand, dedicated bag shops and departments, bags in shoe shops (heaven for the seriously conflicted), in outdoor markets and on the internet reflect a global trend.

In the US, according to Accessories Magazine, the growing handbag segment of the US$30 billion ($42 billion) accessories industry hovered at US$5.34 billion in 2003, second only to jewellery.

Bags' upward climb showed no signs of faltering as they bumped items such as hosiery off department store main floors, said the magazine's editor, Lauren Parker.

Books on bags are also hot. Handbags by Barbara Hagerty "celebrates the significance women have always attached to this most personal item, which both contains the minutiae of their lives and lets the world know how they define their personal style".

In Miller's Handbags: A Collector's Guide, Tracey Tolkien looks at different styles, shapes, fabrics and decoration, including art nouveau-style beaded evening bags, the Perspex geometry of the art deco, the cubist designs of the mid 1930s and the whimsical spirit of 1950s America.

Back at the computer, bag writer Deanna Key contributes such must-reads as "Are you a handbag junkie?" "Is your authentic designer handbag really authentic?" and my favourite, "Is your handbag making you look fat?"

Key quickly dispenses with the outrageous idea that being a handbag aficionado is expensive.

"No more so than men's obsession with cars. Why, the money it would take to buy one '67 Chevy convertible could buy four or five authentic Louis Vuitton."

And there's always renting, a trend taking off in the US. One popular outfit offers levels of membership ranging from $20 Trendsetter to $175 Deluxe Diva, the monthly fee determining which and how many designer handbags can be rented at a time.

Just one important question remains. Can you buy a bag for someone else?

Well, of course you can, darling. Just include an exchange card.