Clear and Compliant

A fashion trend was born when operators of sports contests, music festivals, concerts, and other big gatherings, due to security concerns, began requiring ticket holders to carry bags that were clear and limited in size, in lieu of traditional backpacks and purses, in order to gain entry. Enterprising designers, seeing sports and music fans replace their purses with plastic sandwich bags, began designing fashionable and transparent totes, purses, backpacks, and other bag styles.

The trend started in the early 2010s—the NFL banning opaque bags in 2013 was a big catalyst—and peaked in 2018, around the time that music festival culture became a big design inspiration for fashion labels’ summer collections. But many designers, especially at the luxury end of the spectrum, continue to include at least one clear bag in their assortments. And some continue to release new designs, including, occasionally, through collaborations. Just this month, Brazilian footwear brand Melissa paired with Telfar, a maker of bags and other fashion products that has partnered with the likes of Ugg and Eastpak, for a clear purplish bag called the Telly Jelly, along with a pair of clear Jelly Slides.

Here are some of the other fashion collaborations over the past several years that have focused on clear bags, either solely or as part of a broader assortment:

• Heven, a maker of handblown glass décor, paired last year with Coperni, a luxury label consisting of bags, apparel, and footwear, for a clear glass version of the latter’s Swipe handbag. The Glass Bag has been a hit on the runway, in celebrity sightings, and among wealthy fashionistas.

• Beams had fun with the trend, pairing with Ziploc to make transparent bags and accessories that emulate Ziploc pouches; as noted, actual Ziploc bags were the chosen solution of many fans when the stadium rules first came into effect. A second collaboration extended to umbrellas, backpacks, and more, with several of the bags, change purses, and card holders in the collection again being clear and having designs inspired by the original. There was also a line of t-shirts in partnership with Fruit of the Loom featuring an image that combined the two corporate logos, depicting the Fruit of the Loom fruit inside a Ziploc bag.

• Collins Tuohy Smith, author of Collins Closets, a fashion, travel, and lifestyle blog, and part of the family depicted in the film The Blind Side, worked with GiGi New York to create a translucent Game Day Collins Tuohy Smith x Gigi Collection of NFL and NCAA stadium–compliant bags.

• Comme des Garçons and Disney have partnered several times for handbag collections, with one of the collaborative products being a clear tote bag with a large opaque image of Mickey on one side.

• An Off-White collaboration with luggage maker Rimowa focused on clear, hard sided roller-bags. The products featured signature Off-White design elements, including words like “SECURITY” and “YOUR BELONGINGS,” complete with all-caps and quote marks, that were imprinted on the pieces.

• Belgian designer Rafe Simons paired with Eastpak for a limited line of bags—one of several collaborations between the two—that included a see-through backpack in a reddish hue that was, like the full collection, inspired by the look of the film Blade Runner.

All the examples above involve fashion and lifestyle labels, mostly luxury brands. Not surprisingly, sports licensees that make totes, backpacks, and purses for the major leagues and colleges, including Logo Brands and FOCO, also jumped on the trend, creating licensed messenger, cross-body, and other styles of bags that meet the leagues’ and stadiums’ size and transparency requirements while allowing fans to show their pride for their teams.

There are some problematic aspects of this phenomenon, including the use of plastic and the lack of privacy, that contributed in part to the waning of the clear-bag-as-fashion-accessory trend after its 2018 peak. On the other hand, fashion and lifestyle magazines have continued to periodically call out clear bags as a trend to watch; in fact, Lifestyle Asia did so just yesterday, citing examples from Gucci, Chanel, L’Afshar, and Coperni.

No matter their trend status, clear purses have transitioned into a staple of many bag collections, and that is likely to continue for the foreseeable future, thanks to music- and sports-attending consumers’ ongoing need for transparent bags for security reasons.