Directed by acclaimed British filmmaker Joanna Hogg, this evocative work opens the 29th installment of the Women's Tales series — Miu Miu’s celebrated project that gives voice to independent female creatives. In this poignant film, Hogg gives a soul to an object often seen as merely functional or fashionable, and transforms it into a silent witness to desire, class, memory, and transformation.

A Handbag With a Soul

Set against the melancholic beauty of the Maremma landscape, the story begins with a single image: a dirt-smeared Miu Miu Wander handbag, lying forgotten in the grass. From that moment, Autobiography of a Handbag asks us to follow the invisible thread of its journey — not through glamorous showcases, but through the lives it touches.

We travel from sleek, sterile factories to sun-drenched Italian villas, to the edges of crumbling suburbs. Along the way, the handbag quietly passes between owners: a privileged teenager, a weary mother, a convicted murderer. Each transfer reveals something raw and real — about class, longing, violence, and tenderness.

By turning the camera’s gaze away from people and toward the object itself, Hogg reframes the narrative. What if the story isn’t about the woman wearing the bag, but about the bag itself? And what if, like a moth or an insect, the handbag could observe — silently, unjudging — the worlds it moves through?

The Prop That Holds Our Secrets

The film draws inspiration from The Prop, a book by John David Rhodes and Elena Gorfinkel, which explores the emotional and narrative weight of cinematic objects. That influence is clear in Hogg’s choice to film through four iPhone 16 lenses, offering a wide-angle, ground-level perspective — as though the handbag itself were telling the story, quietly watching as lives unfold around it.

The visual language is simple, but profound. This is not a glossy fashion film — it’s a meditation. A poem in motion.

A Reflection of the Human Condition

As in all Women's Tales episodes, fashion becomes a lens through which deeper themes are explored. Hogg uses the handbag not just as a style symbol, but as a narrative device — a keeper of secrets, a bearer of burdens, a vessel for memories.

“Handbags don’t die,” she says. “They are immortal to a certain extent.” And in that immortality lies the film’s emotional resonance. The bag becomes a kind of phantom — a stand-in for the lives it’s touched, a vessel for the weight women silently carry.

Between It Bags and Eternal Objects

In a world constantly chasing the next It Bag, Autobiography of a Handbag offers a counterpoint. It reminds us that fashion isn’t just fleeting desire — it’s tethered to identity, memory, and meaning. A handbag, once a mere accessory, becomes a heroine. Not because of what it looks like, but because of where it’s been. Because of what it’s seen.

Joanna Hogg’s haunting, tender short leaves us with a new way to see what we carry — not only in our hands, but in our lives. Through a single white Wander handbag, Miu Miu has crafted a tale of immortality, mystery, and quiet rebellion. And in doing so, they’ve reminded us that fashion can be far more than surface — it can be soul.