After Dark · Boots UK 1960s Black Knit Beaded Bag
Woven knit with jet bugle bead embellishment and loop fringe · wrist purse · Boots Company UK · 1960s · approx. 12cm wide x 15cm tall
Jet bugle beads, column upon column, so densely worked across the face of this little wrist bag that the knit ground beneath is almost entirely hidden. At the hem, looped bead fringe that moves when you carry it. This bag does not whisper.
The Boots Company is remembered as the British pharmacy chain, but for a particular decade of the 1960s it read the mood of what women actually wanted to wear out in the evenings, and produced accessories with this kind of finish at a price that meant they didn't have to think twice. There is something quietly political about a beaded evening bag from a chemist: the implicit position being that a woman going to a party should not require a special budget to look magnificent. The fringe agrees.
Jet glass bugle beads throughout the body, looped seed bead fringe at the hem. Dense, satisfying weight in the hand.
Care
Spot-clean only with a barely damp cloth, applied gently; the knit ground will distort under pressure. Store flat in a soft pouch and keep the fringe loose.
More on looking after vintage pieces in our care guide.
Size
Measured flat: Approx. 12cm wide, 15cm tall excluding fringe.
Our size guide explains how vintage sizing is read here.
Condition
Well-loved, with the patina of use. A small number of seed beads are absent from the body of the bag; the surface reads clearly and the loop fringe is intact throughout.
Our condition lexicon explains the grades we use.
Before it reaches you
Someone loved this before you did, and I try to honour that properly. Each piece is hand washed, or cleaned in the way that the fabric permits, then steamed until it softens and straightens and feels newly attended to. Wherever a button was missing, it has been replaced with a vintage one from my long-kept collection. Wherever a hem had given way, I fix it by hand. By the time it leaves this room it is genuinely clean, pressed, whole, and looked over one final time before I let myself believe it is ready. Not restored. Not made new. Just returned to a state where it can be loved again, by someone who was not there the first time.
A bag that does not whisper has to be given something to say, and this one has settled on a low continuous rattle of jet, audible only to the wearer and to anyone standing closer than they were invited to. It came from a chemist, which means it has always known that glamour should not require a special budget, and it carries that small democratic grudge proudly at the wrist. The looped fringe keeps time with the walk and speeds up near a doorway. At every party it attends a bead or two stays behind on purpose, left as a deposit against being asked back.