How a striped bag with a lady in a hat appeared - one of the symbols of the 90s

It is difficult to find a person who lived in the 90s and never once held in his hands a striped bag with the silhouette of a girl in an elegant hat. This was perhaps the most common package. But his popularity was not accidental. This polyethylene product has an interesting story, which was told by its author, designer and artist Natalia Pershukova.

In 1992, Pershukova worked at the Polimerbyt reprocentre. This was the era of Latin American TV series and the favorite was “The Rich Also Cry.” The image of the main character, Marianne, was incredibly popular. That is why the boss asked to use it when creating the design of a new package.

This was an urgent job, for which only one hour was allotted, so the designer did not have time to think. Natalia decided to use what was at hand. She took the signature Marina de Bourbon perfume bag with black and white stripes as a basis. Pershukova created several options, taking standard images from ClipArta.

This is how mock-ups of striped bags with a female silhouette, a portrait and a bottle of perfume framed in a gold oval appeared. The simple and low-color design was good because leftover paint could be used to apply the design. The boss looked at the proposed options and, of course, chose the layout with a silhouette in a hat.

The packages, called “Marianna,” were immediately put into production. They allowed many options: with slotted and looped handles and even “T-shirts”. The choice of sizes was also solid, from small ones that barely fit a book to huge ones, designed for a serious trip to the store.

The novelty immediately found a response among the broad masses. Citizens who were not spoiled by exquisite packaging treated striped bags as full-fledged things. They were taken care of, washed if necessary, and if the polyethylene got a hole or the handles were torn, they were repaired using remarkable ingenuity.

Consumers loved the striped bags so much that other companies began producing them. True, they were called differently. Natalia Pershukova recalls that she saw, in addition to “Marianna”, “Milena”, “Marina” and even “Snezhana”. The designer jokes that if she were paid just one kopeck in royalties for every hundred packages, then she would have been a millionaire for a long time and might not have worked. But the woman has been working as an artist in the same museum for 30 years. She continues to create designs for bags, boxes, films and even sausage casings.