Elizabeth II Collected More Than 200 Handbags and Used Them to Signal Her Staff: Why Young Princesses Carry a Bag Even Though They Do Not Have To

Elizabeth II once admitted she did not feel fully dressed without a handbag. She amassed more than 200 models from the firm Launer. The sentence sounds harmless until you remember she was a woman surrounded by people whose job was to carry everything she needed - and yet the bag was in her own hand.

It was not just for keys. Royal experts say she also used it to communicate with her staff: switching it from one hand to the other mid-conversation meant the conversation should end. A coded signal, performed with a prop everyone can see and nobody reads.

Today the handbag has become the main detail again, but with the next generation. Amalia and Alexia of the Netherlands barely appear without one. Ingrid of Norway did not part with her collection of black clutches during the commemorations for her grandfather, King Harald. And Princess Leonor turned her bag into the most commented-on detail of her first day at university.

Here is the point that stylist Anita Ruiz puts most directly: the meaning is not that they have to carry it, but that they do not. "The search for independence and autonomy of the new monarchies of the twenty-first century," she says. "How significant it is to include a bag when behind you there is a team that could carry everything."

Historically, this is a reversal. From the mid-seventeenth century noblewomen carried no visible bag at all - they had separate pockets tied around the waist and hidden under voluminous skirts. When clothing narrowed in the nineteenth century, those pockets had nowhere left to hide and the reticule appeared, a small bag carried in the hand or on the wrist. It quickly became a fashion obligation. What began as a hiding place ended as a display.

With Leonor there is a second layer. As with Queen Letizia for years, her choices turn into a platform for Spanish firms. Every time she carries a bag made in Spain, the exposure for the brand is enormous. This summer in Girona she carried a soft bucket bag from the Galician label Heimat Atlantica, whose founder Montserrat Álvarez works with crafts tied to the Atlantic coast. "We knew she liked the brand, but it was a surprise," she said.

And there is a third layer, the simplest and the most charming. These young women borrow bags from their mothers' wardrobes. Amalia appeared at an event last year with a burgundy Chanel Classic Jumbo that has belonged to Queen Máxima since 2019. Leonor, at the opening of the fifteenth legislature in 2023, brought out a camel short-handled bag by Carolina Herrera that her mother had worn earlier. Ingrid Alexandra in 2022 completed one of her first institutional appearances with a burgundy Aspinal of London clutch that belongs to Mette-Marit.

So it is a signal of independence and a loan from mum at the same time. That is not a contradiction - that is exactly how every family works where clothes pass from one generation to the next. The only difference is that with them, every such move is photographed by thirty people.