Is it ok for me to wear that?
Purse Alert began with the tagline, “authentic, pre-loved, designer bags…for everyone,” in order to invite, well, everyone. We don’t think your income bracket should determine how you choose to style yourself, and buying pre-loved is a great way to add some designer pieces that would otherwise be out of reach. We think preconceived notions like if someone getting out of a minivan is carrying a Birkin, then it must be fake are just plain silly. And the thought that a man cannot carry a bag is preposterous. If you like it, wear it. Outdated rules are not going to gatekeep this man from his bags.
I believe handbags exist in a much different space than other clothing and accessories. People bond and identify with their handbags in a strong way. Just look at the thousands of pages of user posts on forum.purseblog.com, /handbags on Reddit, #purseaddict and #bagoftheday, among many others on Instagram and Pinterest. More than just offering utility by way of accessory, handbags project identity and individuality to the world. Different from clothes, jewelry and other accessories, they aren’t worn; they’re carried or displayed. Bags communicate everything from status, style, image, lineage, even morality depending on where they’re made and what they’re made out of. All this and yet nothing inherent in their design communicates gender or sex or sexual preference.
Every person needs to carry things with them away from home. Why place limits on their ability to do so? Rumblings began in the late 90s and early naughts when catchwords like manbag, murse and metrosexual became part of the common cultural parlance, usually in a negative or mocking tone. But the groundwork was laid, and by 2017 bags experienced a sea change. As Fendi, Chanel, Loewe, Louis Vuitton, Balenciaga, Coach and others began sending bags down the menswear runways on the arms of every male model, the public realized that bags weren’t gendered. Literally everyone can wear one, should they want to.
Male rappers like A$AP Rocky, Drake, Kanye, 2 Chainz and Jay-Z sport bags from Hermes, Goyard, Louis Vuitton, and Gucci without anyone batting an eye. The same can be said of male pop stars like Harry Styles, Travis Scott and Pharrell Williams, who aside from ubiquitously wearing bags in any paparazzi shot taken since 2012, became a brand ambassador for Chanel bags, a model for Coach bags, and now creative director for Louis Vuitton Menswear where he continues including traditional handbags within the realm of menswear. Funny enough, as I continue emphasizing inclusivity of everyone, his most recent SS2025 show in Paris was presented on the grounds of UNESCO as an homage to all human beings through a representation of the entire world. Each man walking down that runway was styled with a bag—from mini-clutch, soft satchel, to oversized tote, no style of bag appears off limits. Clearly his vision is being met with approval. GQ named him designer of the year.
While this universal inclusion and public acceptance is relatively new, the concept is not. Fashion designer Marc Jacobs has worn bags for decades at this point. There’s social media influencers like @TheBirkenBoy and hashtags like #boyswithbags on Instagram and Pinterest. Even in the sphere of professional athletes, the manliest of all manly professions, sports stars like Christian Renaldo and David Beckham have amassed handbag collections that make their wives jealous (yes, both are heterosexual married males who collect and wear handbags). And no, it’s not isolated to soccer players or European men. Purseblog.com has a running feature on the many bags of the men of the NBA.
All men wear bags. Not just young men, not just gay men, not just foreign men. All of them.
