The COPENHAGEN bag

It is art season in Copenhagen, somewhere along the way, here I am, spending the afternoon at Enter Art Fair doing what I naturally do: filed research, aka. watching people’s bags.

I have always been interested in the relationship between people and the objects they choose to stay with. A bag is particularly revealing, as it is so close to the body, used every day, exposed to weather and friction, and naturally marked by its owners’s personalities and life style. One of the most visible objects through which we communicate taste, status and

Belonging.

I began to notice bags that seemed to exist outside the conventional cycle of luxury labels. Mulberry, Proenza Schouler, worn Balenciaga city, old leather workbags. Brands that has their moment in the fashion cycle years ago, but still feels strangely alive in Copenhagen.

A Danish girl carrying her well-loved Proenza Schouler satchel at CHART Art Fair.

Then there were the art fairs.

Louis Vuitton appeared everywhere. Among gallery owners and people working within the commercial art ecosystem, Hermès kept appearing. However, there was often very little of the obvious visual language we associate with luxury. They were styled with workwear, sneakers, lived causal looks.

Absolutely loved her styling with this classic Hermès Birkin at Enter Art Fair.

The contrast interested me.

Luxury was present, but wasn’t being treated ceremoniously. The Copenhagen bag, to me, is not a particular brand. It is a relationship to the object.

A luxury object does not have to remain pristine to remain valuable.

It can be old.
It can be worn.
It can be slightly strange.
It can be unfashionable.
It can carry evidence of a life.

Perhaps this is one of the things I recognise in Copenhagen: a comfort with things being lived in.

The same attitude seems to extend beyond bags. I keep encountering textile, handmade surfaces, ceramics, embroidery, visible craftsmanship and objects where texture matters. There is an appreciation for things that show how they were made, how they have been handled, or how they have transformed.

Textures I captured at the art fairs.

Perhaps this is why I feel so at home here. I am fascinated by the traces of use, the material history, the intentional intervention and the possibility of something becoming desirable again for completely different reasons, ultimately the emotional bondage with objects we all had in the old good days.

Me taking the very first tourist picture at Nyhavn, after so many visits to this city.

So what makes a bag belong to a city? I think it belongs to the person carrying it.