The Handbag Museum
Wisdom and Sincerity Make Way for Craftsmanship,
A Unique Value Created Over a Long Period of Time,
All Answered with Simone
The Handbag Museum
The World's First Handbag Museum that Showcases the History and Future of Handbags
The Simone Handbag Museum opened in 2012 to inform people of the history of handbags and to inspire and educate young designers.
The Simone Handbag Museum was designed by London-based fashion curator, Ms. Judith Clark. Simone teamed up with Clark to collect 350 high-value handbags to record the history of fashion. In addition to handbags, the museum itself serves as a collective product that reflects the passion for collections in museums and the research of innovative mannequin designs.
Our museum is the world's first handbag museum. We have promoted the museum as a “must-see” attraction in Seoul to famous international media outlets such as CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Financial Times.
Also, we have been selected as one of the world's leading fashion museums by Italian fashion magazine Vanity Fair and travel magazine Condé Nast Traveler.
The Collection
A handbag is a contemporary object that shows the past as well as a unique connection between product and collection. The museum is not about embodying the past and pursuing the fashion of the “it-bag.” The museum is a place where women can continue to record and live their own lives.
We wanted to focus on how handbags contribute to establishing a woman's identity.
The Simone Handbag Museum consists of a Historical Hall and a Modern Hall. The museum showcases handbags that represent different historical time periods in Western fashion, from the rare pockets of the 1500s to the latest handbags of the 21st century. The Historical Hall embodies an old-fashioned Victorian atmosphere while the Modern Hall is an all-white concept with a laboratory-like atmosphere that looks as though it is a room currently under restoration.
Handbags : The Making of a Museum
When the handbag museum opened, Yale Publishing Houses published the book Handbags: The Making of a Museum. The book includes images of the handbag collections, the planning process, the history of the exhibition building process, the exhibition collection, the interior, and photographs of the building. The book includes an essay on exhibition design written by Judith Clark. It also includes essays from the following people: handbag expert Claire Wilcox (Senior Vocational Curator at the Victoria and Albert Museum), Caroline Evans (Professor of Fashion Theory at Central Saint Martin University), and Adam Phillips. Amy de la Haye (Curator of the Victoria and Albert Museum Curriculum of Material Culture) co-authored the book.