the original IT bag

At the Christie's online handbag auction in June, a black crocodile Hermès Birkin bag sold for £49,250 (over $95,000). That's enough to put a decent deposit on a house, or buy a boat or a luxury car. For something you just put stuff in. But then the Hermès Birkin - the Hermes card case bagtwin-handled, padlocked carrier that sends potent signals of status, wealth and a luxury lifestyle - is not just a bag. It's no more a mere repository than its equally coveted sister the Hermès Kelly, and other "It" bags such as the Chanel 2.55 and the Céline tote, which have become objects of desire, coveted beyond all reason.entral to the story in Niamh Greene's Coco's Secret, is the original IT bag. Long before The Kelly, The Birkin and The Bayswater, Chanel designed the classic 2.55 with its resplendent burgundy kid interior and secret lining for love letters. It was so called because it was launched in February 1955 and remains a style staple to this day, much copied, never surpassed.

o know her father, and strangely there is no suggestion that she is interested in finding him, we don't know if he was Irish or Hermes new sonctanceFrench, married or just feckless. Coco does, however, commence a search for the owner of the bag after she finds a poignant love letter concealed in the lining. Her detective work takes her to Dublin, London and, fatefully, to another small Irish village where she meets the handsome Mac Gilmartin. This dashing charmer has a dog sanctuary and yes, he is the sort of man who could melt a woman's heart. Niamh Greene has fashioned a simple detective tale that is both a voyage of discovery for Coco Swan and a contemporary perspective on topical issues, such as adoption in the 1950s and single motherhood then and now. Coco's aunt Anna acts as the foil for the good-humoure At a country auction, buried in a box of bric à brac, a vintage version of the bag comes into the hands of antique dealer, Coco Swan. The mousy young woman is painfully aware that her name doesn't resonate with that "The internet is flooded with websites and blogs

 ... salivating over everything from the Gucci suitcasesuppleness of the leather and the shininess of the hardware," says trend forecaster Susie Draffan, co-author of Bag, a new book that celebrates timeless, luxury handbag design. The original It bag, the "Kelly", entered fashion consciousness in the 1950s, when Grace Kelly appeared on the cover of Life magazine with a Hermès bag masking her pregnancy. The front-fastening single-handled bag begat a fame of its own. Prices now start at $11,540 for a Kelly 32. But true It-bag fervour can be tracked to an explosion of celebrity gossip in the 1990s. Paparazzi photos of Kate Hudson at the airport with a Jimmy Choo, or Elle Macpherson with a Gucci on a school run, suddenly made these bags covetable. Even if the celebrity was clad simply in jeans and T-shirt, the presence of a Marc Jacobs Stam or a Chloé Paddington bag on her arm signalled, not so discreetly,