No, I’m not homeless (thank God) and wandering around with an endless amount of supermarket bags. And neither am I a Prada/Mulberry/whatever the other latest brands are-kind of bag lady. By and large I find most ‘designer’ bags too ugly, too pricey and too precious. I am, however, quite fond of bags. And quite picky.
My requirements were:
- stylish, professional but not corporate standard issue
- backpack (to relieve the strain on my back, and most ladies will agree with me that messenger bags are not very ehm… fetching due to the chest area. You get my drift)
- able to carry both a couple of books, a laptop, couple of magazines, wallet, keys, phones, water bottle, notebook, and a couple of pouches I carry all my stuff (cables, business cards, pain killers etc) around in. And to top it off: be able to fit in my gym gear so I don’t have to have separate bags for that.
- good value for money: I don’t need it to be dirt-cheap, heck, I’ll probably carry it around for years if I like it, but I don’t want to pay £400. But it needs to be good quality fabric and stitching and be able to take a bit of rain or snow.
- No pleather, crocodile prints, flimsy straps, and absolutely no pink.
As far as I’m concerned, these weren’t too hard to fulfill. Except for they were, and I spent 6 months looking for THE bag. And then, after a tip from a good friend, I found it. Here it is:
(Obviously, it’s not me modeling it, it’s a pic I copied from the Crumpler website)
It’s the Crumpler Local Identity, and I’ve had it for a week* and love it. Enough space, ability to divide the bag into 2 sections, side access, waterproof. So there you go: it pays to a) know what you want and b) stick to your guns til you find it.
*Only downside is that you can only buy it from the Asia-Pacific branch of Crumpler, so I was lucky that a friend in Hong Kong bought it and found a way to get it to me. Crumpler, please fix this!
[edit to this post after some more carrying the bag around: I forgot to mention 1 essential criterion: 1 bag. I hate carrying more than 1 bag around with me, so everything needs to go into this one bag. No separate purses, lady bags etc.]