Scrolling through street-style photos from fashion week, as I’m wont to do, I came across a trend I found baffling—nay—troubling. Show-goers, particularly in Paris, seemed keen to wear Chanel’s side-packs. If you, like me, are not sure what side-packs are, allow me to explain: It’s two quilted Chanel handbags that are connected via a harness-like chain that you wear across your body. Each of the bags then hits at opposite hips. Now that we’re on the same page, definition-wise, I have a question: Why?
Is it because your vast sartorial knowledge can’t be contained by one handbag alone?
Is it so when you’re seated front row next to Vogue St. Tropez’s Pretension Editor during Couture Week and she tells you she likes your bag, you get to say, “which one?”
Is it because you never know when your friend will show up to brunch without even one Chanel handbag and it would be so devastatingly embarrassing for her to be so brazen in her lack of Chanel handbags that you’d have no choice but to lend her one of your two Chanel handbags?
