When were metal mesh bags first popular?

Mesh purses became fashionable in the late 1800s, first as hand-linked silver and gold evening bags, then boomed in the 1920s when machine-made enamelled mesh made them affordable. American maker Whiting & Davis, founded in 1876, is the name most associated with that era and still produces mesh today.

Are vintage mesh bags and modern wire bags the same thing?

They are cousins. Vintage mesh purses are usually made of tiny linked plates or rings, giving a fluid, scale-like surface. Modern wire bags are knitted from a continuous fine wire, giving an open, net-like mesh that is lighter and semi-transparent. Both treat metal as fabric.

Who made chainmail fashionable in the 20th century?

Paco Rabanne's 1960s collections built dresses and bags from linked metal and plastic plates and made hard materials part of couture vocabulary. Later designers — most famously Gianni Versace with his Oroton metal mesh — kept the language alive, and it resurfaces every time fashion turns metallic.

metal mesh bags — a short history

From chainmail to the wire-mesh bag, by spoii.world.

Metal has been worn as fabric for over a thousand years. The modern knitted wire bag — the brass bag, or wire-mesh bag — is just the newest chapter in a long story of people asking metal to drape, fold and carry.

Chainmail: the engineering ancestor

Every mesh bag inherits its physics from armour. Chainmail works because thousands of small interlocking rings share a load between them — flexible in every direction, strong far beyond what any single ring could take. Swap the iron rings for fine brass wire and the same principle produces a bag that weighs almost nothing yet shrugs off a week's shopping.

Victorian chatelaines and the first mesh purses

In the late 1800s, small hand-linked mesh purses in silver and gold hung from chatelaines at the waist. Each one was assembled ring by ring by hand, which kept them expensive and small — coin purses more than handbags — but established the idea of precious metal mesh as a feminine accessory.

The Jazz Age boom

Machine-made mesh changed everything. Once mesh could be produced by machine and enamelled in colour, the mesh purse became one of the defining accessories of the 1920s — Art Deco patterns printed on armour, swinging from a wrist at a dance. Whiting & Davis, founded in Massachusetts in 1876, became the name of the era and is still making metal mesh today — proof of how durable the material and the idea both are.

Couture picks up the chainmail

In the 1960s Paco Rabanne built collections from linked metal and plastic plates and put hard materials on the couture runway. Gianni Versace's liquid Oroton mesh followed in the 1980s and 90s. Since then, metal mesh returns whenever fashion swings metallic — which, as our metallic accessories guide argues, is exactly where the mid-2020s have landed.

The wire-mesh bag moment

The current wave is different in one important way: it is knitted, not linked. A continuous fine wire — often brass — is worked in loops like yarn, producing an open, net-like mesh that is sheer, feather-light and quietly handmade-looking. The look grew on Chinese social platforms under the name wire-mesh bag and spread with the broader revival of the humble market net bag: practical, unbranded, and honest about what you are carrying.

Where it lands today

Our contribution is Tonsiba (£95) — one tote, knitted from fine brass wire, twin riveted handles, made to order in a 14-day run. If the history sold you but the upkeep worries you, the care guide will settle it in two minutes.

Last reviewed: 2026-07-16