| | | | | |
| A controversial figure during her reign as Prime Minster, | | | | While a closer ally, Nicholas Ridley once remarked in |
| thanks to the Cold War and Miner’s Strike, it is | | | | her absence at a cabinet committee meeting: |
| Lady Thatcher’s leather handbags that became a | | | | |
| icon of her government. While she once described her | | | | "Why don't we start? The handbag is here." |
| handbag as the only safe place in Downing Street, her | | | | |
| colleagues came to see them as symbolic of her | | | | Lady Thatcher’s quality leather handbags are |
| philosophy. | | | | associated with a timeless style and an individualism |
| | | | | which led them to being dubbed as ‘cool’. They |
| Julian Critchley, one of Baroness Thatcher's biggest | | | | even inspired handbag designers such as Marc Jacobs |
| Tory backbench critics remarked: | | | | and one of her black leather handbags sold at auction |
| | | | | for over $100,000 to a Scottish business man, after |
| "Margaret Thatcher and her handbag is the same as | | | | receiving 63 bids! In it was a signed note from |
| Winston Churchill and his cigar." | | | | Baroness Thatcher. The proceeds went to a breast |
| | | | | cancer charity called Breast Cancer Care. After the |
| Critchley also coined the verb "to handbag" when he | | | | auction Mrs. Thatcher remarked how pleased she |
| said: | | | | was that her leather handbags had not only done her |
| | | | | a good service in the Cabinet but also that they had |
| "She cannot see an institution without hitting it with her | | | | such an influence and had raised so much money for |
| handbag", | | | | a good cause. |