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Multicolor plastic coil shoulder bag from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 13 May 1949, Fri The Buffalo News (Buffalo, New York) Newspapers.com |
As with all of our articles, in particular those dealing with the origins of materials used in handbags, we must preface this by saying our goal is not to disparage those who share misinformation. We believe that incorrect information about vintage handbags is not spread with ill intent. Rather, it is, as we’ve analogized before, akin to a game of telephone, in which unverified perceptions or ideas are passed along, changed or embellished, and taken as fact. Coincidentally, this particular mythology involves actual telephones!
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| Unusual ice bucket-shaped plastic coil bag from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
So, let’s talk about plastic coil (or “spiral”) bags. We’ll start by addressing some of the common myths about them and give you a summary of the reality. Keep reading for much more detail after this list, along with photos and vintage advertisements.
1. Myth: They are made of real telephone cords. Reality: They are made of plastic coils laminated onto cotton fabric. The term "telephone cord purse" is a contemporary designation.
2. Myth: These bags were hand-stitched by ladies who were trying to support the war effort. Reality: The fabric was made in a complex process on machines after the war.
3. Myth: These bags were invented because of WWII materials' shortages, when women couldn’t buy handbags in stores. Reality: While the manufacturers themselves had limited access to materials, including leather, US residents could still buy leather handbags in the 1940s. Unlike shoes, handbags did not require a ration coupon.
4. Myth: It was considered patriotic to carry one of these bags, and the most popular color combination was red, white and blue. Reality: There is no evidence to support that this was a patriotic symbol, and, as far as we know, they were not made in that color combination. The Vintage Purse Museum presently has 22 plastic coil bags, and none are red, white and blue. (Note: It is possible that they were made; we just haven’t seen one.)
5. Myth: These bags were only made during WWII. Reality: The patent application by this fabric’s inventor is dated 1945, the same year the war ended. The most recent ad we could find for the plastic coil bag was from 1960. Based on newspaper advertisements, they appeared to have peaked in popularity in the early- to mid-1950s. These bags are difficult to accurately date to the exact year of production, but we can tell you that they were made for about 15 years. (Note: One of our Instagram friends had a plastic coil bag that appeared to be of later construction, made in Asia, so it is possible that some were produced in the later 1960s. There was also a contemporary version made by Staud.)
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| Photo of couple, with woman wearing a plastic coil shoulder bag, circa late 1940s to early 1950s, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Plastic Coil Bags - The Real Story
Here is the sketch from the original patent. We didn’t include the text from this application, but you can read it here via Google Patents.
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| Ludwig Kaphan's patented plastic coil cord fabric, screenshot from Google Patents. |
Below is a detailed explanation of the plastic coil fabric construction process, shared with us by Frank Kaphan, whose uncle Ludwig invented the material, and whose father Ed created the machines. Ludwig and Ed were the “Lu” and “ed” in the Lumured company, which is best known for its plastic-beaded fabric bags, also invented by Ludwig, and made in a similar process. We wrote an article about Lumured, which you can read here.
Frank Kaphan’s email to The Vintage Purse Museum (lightly edited):
“Cellulose acetate plastic was extruded in a thin strip, flat on one side and rounded on the other. My dad (Ed Kaphan) made metal spools, perhaps 8" wide and 24" in diameter onto which the plastic strip was wound as it came out of the extruder (after going through a cooling bath of water to fix its shape). The spools turned and the strip was guided back and forth to wind on neatly as in a self-leveling fishing reel.
Metal rods, 10' long, with the diameter of the inside of the coils, were used to wind the coils. The rods had a machined slot on one end and a ridge on the other end, like a flathead screwdriver, so that they could fit together and be fed one after the other into the coiling machine through the center of the spool to create an ‘endless’ rod to wind the plastic on. The rods passed through a heating tunnel that softened the plastic so that it would assume the coil shape permanently when it cooled, and a person cut the 10' long pieces of coil apart between the sections of the rod as they came out and let them drop into a bin to cool. Then my dad built a Rube Goldberg machine that grabbed the coil, twisted the rod in the direction opposite of the coil to loosen it, and then shot the rod out between 2 spinning rubber wheels back to the front of the machine to be used again. The loose coils dropped down and piled up in a bin to be used in the next operation.
Each style designed by Ludwig had its own boards with slots to hold the coils in position milled into them. The coils were placed by hand into the slots in the correct colors and design, etc., and then the twill fabric that had been cut to shape for each style, soaked in acetone, was placed on top of the coils and clamped together with another board so the plastic would dissolve and become permanently attached to the cloth. I seem to remember that the clamps were actually metal plates with a big screw and wheel on top that was spun around to press and hold the boards together. That was before the days of having compressed air throughout the building making pressing and clamping and so forth possible using air cylinders to provide the movement and force.
The ‘covers’ (outsides of bags) were then assembled with glue at the seams (I think using rubber contact cement applied to both sides, allowed to dry somewhat, and then pressed together to bond instantly because the thickness of the coils made it impossible to sew things together on the ‘left’ (reverse) side without leaving wide areas of ‘naked’ fabric. Then sewed linings could be dropped in, zippers applied, handles attached, etc.”
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As to Ludwig's inspiration for this revolutionary design, we’ll never know. That said, The Vintage Purse Museum found 1944-1950 newspaper advertisements for spiral plastic telephone cord covers in assorted colors. (Earliest ad directly below.)
There is a 1945 advertisement that compared plastic coil bags to “the coils that keep your telephone cord from twisting.” (See below.) This advertisement is the only one we could find that mentions the product in the ad above, which could genuinely be its inspiration, or simply a selling point conceived by the bags' marketing department. While most advertisements call these “plastic coil” or “spiral” handbags, and they were occasionally said to resemble beaded bags, we felt we would be remiss if we did not share these two ads. The main point is to dispel the most common myth about these, which is that they were made of actual telephone cords. We hope that this will make moot the numerous online articles and discussions debating types and colors of 1930s-1940s phone cords in the context of these handbags.
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| Pair of plastic coil clutches from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Other than newspaper advertisements, the most comprehensive reference to the business name Plastic Fashions, Inc., and the brand name Revere-Flex, appears on the website of The Bag Lady, whose wealth of information is often a starting point for our research. The address given for Plastic Fashions on The Bag Lady’s website is in New York City, which is where many mid-century handbag makers had showrooms or manufacturers’ representatives. Quite a few of these bag makers had factories in different locations, including New Jersey, which was where Lumured had its factory. In addition to having to navigate these broad parameters, there were no online references that directly led us to the name of a person or persons associated with Plastic Fashions.
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| Original photo, circa 1950s, from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. One of the women in the group is wearing a plastic coil bag. |
We could not find evidence of Plastic Fashions, Inc. in New York or New Jersey business name records, nor could we find a trademark for Revere-Flex. We did locate several businesses in other US states with “Plastic Fashions” in their names, but they did not appear to be handbag makers. We reached out to various cities’ historical organizations for verification, but none responded.
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| Unusual plastic coil bag with glittery bird plaque insert. No maker tag, but more than likely by Plastic Fashions, Inc. as evidenced by the advertisement below. |
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| Plastic Fashions ad from the March 1958 edition of Handbags & Accessories magazine. It features a vinyl bag, which was a trend of the time, with the same bird motif as the plastic coil bag in The Vintage Purse Museum's collection. H&A magazine from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
Plastics was a huge field of research and development before, during and post-WWII, as many companies in countless industries were seeking new materials to replace or improve existing products. In the handbag business, this meant the use of cellulose, acrylic, vinyl and other types of plastics. (Read our article about plastics here.) There were a number of company names that we found in New York and New Jersey business name searches that very well could’ve been the predecessor to Plastic Fashions, Inc., with the same ownership, but we can’t prove it using those records.
However, we did find some references in the newspaper archives, including a marriage announcement that said one of the betrothed worked for Plastic Fashions in North Bergen, New Jersey. Sometimes it’s the smallest clue that leads to the greatest discoveries!
After seeing this marriage announcement, we stumbled upon an obscure 1950s document (title withheld for privacy) which included the name Plastic Fashions, Inc. Based on some of the details in the document, we once again contacted our friend Frank Kaphan to see if it rang a bell. Frank remembered hearing the name Lou Caporaso, possibly in relation to Plastic Fashions. Prior to emailing us with this memory, he did his own research and found the 1950 US Census record that gave Mr. Caporaso’s information, including that he owned a “hand big” (sic) factory.
We proceeded down yet another rabbit hole and learned that Mr. Caporaso and his brother Joseph Caporaso were in the handbag business in North Bergen, New Jersey. However, we still could not find the name Plastic Fashions associated with either man. We reached out to a family member (name withheld for privacy) and they confirmed that the name of Louis Caporaso’s company was, in fact, Plastic Fashions. The family member also told us they have one of these plastic coil handbags.
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Pair of plastic coil bags from the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. 03 Jun 1960, Fri Pensacola News Journal (Pensacola, Florida) Newspapers.com |
While we can’t say with complete certainty that the Caporasos’ company was the one to which the Kaphans sent their plastic coil fabric, we can conclude with near certainty, based on bits of old documents, Frank’s memory, and the Caporaso family’s confirmation, as well as the geographical proximity of Louis Caporaso’s factory to the Lumured factory, that this was the Plastic Fashions that made Revere-Flex plastic coil handbags. We wish we could tell you why they chose the name “Revere-Flex” for the style, but we simply don’t know. (We will update this article if we hear from sources we've contacted over the last few months.)
Complicating matters is the fact that a Canadian company, General Plastics, Ltd., based in Toronto, also made these bags under the “Plasticoil” brand name. We reached out to plastic industry trade organizations in Canada, but no one responded.
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| The only plastic coil bag in The Vintage Purse Museum collection that has the Plasticoil - General Plastics - Toronto, Canada label. We believe Plastic Fashions' Revere-Flex bags were unlabeled and instead had a paper tag that was attached by a string to the handle. |
We present three theories in regard to how General Plastics, Ltd. (which was purchased by Wallace Silversmiths, Ltd. of Connecticut in 1957) came to create this product using a US-patented fabric. One is that the Kaphans shipped the material to them as a contracted, secondary resource for fabrication. Another is that Plastic Fashions, Inc. subcontracted the fabrication of these handbags to them. The third theory is that General Plastics, Inc. made its own version of plastic coil fabric and created and marketed them independently of the Kaphans and Plastic Fashions. This remains a mystery.
We found a 1961 US government document that mentions Wallace Silversmith’s acquisition of General Plastics, Ltd., and it says the company made "plastic tableware." If that is correct, then we can conclude that handbags were not a primary product for General Plastics, Ltd. of Toronto. The latest newspaper advertisement we could find for plastic coil handbags was dated 1960, and we don’t know if these bags were made by the New Jersey company or the Canadian company.
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| These color combinations are seen less frequently than other plastic coil bags. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum. |
In a 1957 copy of the trade publication Handbags & Accessories, we found an ad for Plastic Fashions, Inc., introducing their line of handbags called Bags by Casa. (Perhaps a diminutive of the name Caporaso.) We only found one newspaper advertisement, dated 1960, for Casa handbags.
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| Ad for Plastic Fashions' line of Casa bags, from the September 1957 edition of Handbags & Accessories magazine. From the collection of The Vintage Purse Museum |
We know that Joseph Caporaso went on to become a politician in Moonachie, New Jersey, but we don't know how long Louis Caporaso was in the handbag business (although we know he started prior to 1937). Joseph died in 1975 and Louis in 1979.
Ultimately, our goal is to share the true history, what we know of it, of these fabulous, collectible plastic coil bags. While their current moniker of “telephone cord purses” will likely never change, we hope that you enjoyed learning about them as much as we did.
The Vintage Purse Museum is forever grateful to Frank Kaphan for his insight, information and sense of humor. We also credit Google and the website of The Bag Lady, which we often use for research, and Newspapers.com and MyHeritage.com, to which we have paid subscriptions. This article c2023 by Wendy Dager/The Vintage Purse Museum. Please do not use information or photos from this website without requesting permission, vintagepursemuseum@gmail.com.
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