Antica Pasticceria Milano, handbag
(c. 1991)
- Medium
- leather, acetate (lining) metal (fastenings)
- Measurements
- 19.0 × 19.5 × 15.5 cm
- Place/s of Execution
- Italy
- Inscription
- label, adhered to rear face of bag, imprinted on gold coloured metal: MOSCHINO/BAG
- Accession Number
- 2020.707
- Department
- International Fashion and Textiles
- Credit Line
- National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Purchased with funds donated by the Bertocchi family, 2020
Photo courtesy of Evolution vintage, photographer Annette Navarro - Gallery location
- Level 3, NGV International
- About this work
-
During the 1980s and into the 1990s, expensive designer logo handbags became the ultimate status symbol for a new demographic of wealthy consumers with disposable incomes. Franco Moschino produced a body of work that playfully satirised these behaviours, haute couture conventions and the fashion industry at large. Amusing but also functional, the Antica pasticceria Milano handbag recalls the phrase ‘Let them eat cake’, often misattributed to the eighteenth-century fashionista Marie Antoinette. A parody of the ‘It bags’ of the decade, Moschino’s work is more than a metaphor for the excesses of fashion, with the suggestion it is possible to have one’s cake and wear it too.