Why are accessories so important in the fashion world today? Ever since Prada launched the Pocone backpack in 1987 and Tom Ford transformed the classical ‘Gucci’ bag label into a luxury fashion brand, it’s been impossible to imagine the collections of the major fashion houses without accessories and accessory campaigns. This live topic constitutes the basic theme of this book. What significance do accessories have in relation to fashion? How do accessories reflect the culture of our time? And in what way do they represent or illustrate a cultural shift in the perception of fashion? This book also sketches out a number of developments in the history of the fashion accessory and its typologies, and shows that themes and design principles from movements such as Surrealism, Modernism, the carnivalesque and Postmodernism keep recurring in accessory design.