At 62, I found four black handbags in my wardrobe and could not say why I owned one of them
At 62, I found four black handbags in my wardrobe and could not say why I owned one of them
Six things the Bodine gets right that everyday handbags get wrong, from a woman who does not review handbags.
Caroline Richards · Customer · Nottinghamshire · 5 min read
Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Caroline, I am 62, I live in Nottinghamshire, and I have carried handbags for forty-odd years without once writing to a shop about one. What set this off was a charity bag. I was clearing the top of the wardrobe and I found four black handbags. Four. All slightly different, all essentially the same bag, and I could not have told you why I owned a single one of them.
The one I have now is called the Bodine, from Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly making the ordinary things a bit lovelier for a few years now. Caramel, with a wide woven strap in teal and gold running right across it. When the boutique later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition that I could be completely honest in it.
Three different women asked me about it at the garden centre a fortnight later. Read on.
How it happens
Here is the part I want to say properly, because I do not think it is any of our faults. Nobody sets out to own four black handbags. You buy black because you are in a hurry and you do not want to make a mistake. Black is the safe one. Black is the one nobody can tell you was the wrong choice. So you take it to the till, and you do that four times over fifteen years, and what you end up with is not a collection of choices. It is the same non-decision, made repeatedly.
And the shops know it. Walk past any handbag display and count the black ones. We are sold sensible, over and over, and sensible is very easy to sell to women our age because we have been trained to think that wanting something for the look of it is a bit silly at sixty-two.
What I had wrong
I had been saying the same sentence for years without ever once examining it: black goes with everything. Standing there with all four of them laid out on the bed, I finally thought about it properly, and it is not true. Black does not go with everything. Black fails to clash with anything, which sounds like the same thing and is not.
My wardrobe is navy and grey and brown and cream, and a black bag does nothing for any of it. It just sits there, being correct. The caramel lifts the lot.
Sensible had stopped meaning a good decision and started meaning no decision. Four bags on the bed is what that looks like after fifteen years.
The Bodine is the first handbag I have bought on purpose in a very long time, and having carried it every day since it came, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day it came. I had half expected to be sending it back.
IT DOES NOT LOOK LIKE WHAT IT COST
This is the first thing and it is the thing that keeps happening. The finish is soft and gently grained, the sort that looks as though it was bought years ago somewhere nice and looked after since, and it slouches without collapsing. Two women at the garden centre asked me where it was from in the tone people use when they think a thing was expensive. I have not felt the need to correct either of them.
On the hall table, where it has somehow always been.
A lady at the garden centre asked if it was an heirloom. I had had it a fortnight.
Audrey G., BramcoteTHE STRAP IS THE WHOLE POINT
Most handbag straps are an apology. A thin dark strip that cuts into your shoulder by the end of the road. This one is properly wide and woven, teal with a gold pattern running its entire length, so the weight spreads out and my shoulder has nothing to say about it. It adjusts with a little gold buckle and it unclips at both ends, which also means that on a rack of coats and bags at a coffee morning, nobody has ever once picked up mine by mistake.
The strap up close. The little gold hook is the detail that finished me.
The strap gets more compliments than the bag does, and the bag gets plenty. Nothing digs in.
Beryl S., WollatonIT ZIPS RIGHT ACROSS THE TOP
I do not know when handbags decided an open top was acceptable, but I never agreed to it. This one closes with a proper zip that runs the whole way across, so nothing tips out when it goes over in the footwell, and on the bus into town I can rest my hand on the strap instead of keeping guard over the opening. It is a small thing that turns out not to be a small thing at all.
All the way across. I had stopped expecting it.
First bag in years I am happy with on the bus. Zipped shut and my hand on the strap.
Rita M., ChilwellTHE INSIDE IS PALE, SO YOU CAN SEE WHAT IS IN IT
Inside it is lined in a light sand colour rather than the usual black cave, and that one decision has saved me more aggravation than anything else about it. You look in and you can see. There is a flat pocket and a zipped one, so my glasses live somewhere, my keys live somewhere, and the phone is not at the bottom under a rain hood while it rings itself out.
Glasses, purse and phone, each with a home. Nothing hides in this one.
The pale lining is the thing nobody mentions and it is the thing I notice every single day.
Peggy H., FarnsfieldIT TAKES A WHOLE DAY OUT AND STILL LOOKS LIKE A HANDBAG
A cardigan, an umbrella, my book, the glasses, the purse and a bag of bulbs from the garden centre on the way home. It took all of it. And because the shape has a bit of composure about it, it still looked like a handbag getting off the bus rather than a carrier bag with a strap on. Empty or full, it keeps its line, which the floppy ones never did.
Cardigan, brolly, book and the shopping, and it still looked smart when I got home.
Yvonne D., TuxfordCARAMEL GOES WITH MORE THAN BLACK EVER DID
This is the one I came for and it is the one I would put to you hardest. Caramel goes with navy. It goes with grey. It goes with brown, which black never manages, and with the cream coat I had all but given up on. It has done the market, a christening, my sister's birthday lunch and the walk to the postbox without once being swapped. They do it in black and green and cream as well, for women more sensible than I have turned out to be.
Out for coffee with Sue, who noticed it before she noticed me.
I bought it for best and now it does every day as well. The caramel goes with everything I own.
Gwen L., CollinghamThe Bodine, against the four on top of the wardrobe
I have the evidence, and it was in a charity bag by Tuesday. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Bought quickly so as not to make a mistake
A thin strap that cuts in by the second street
An open top, or a zip that only half closes
A dark cave inside, everything at the bottom
Fails to clash with anything, lifts nothing
Chosen on purpose, for the look of it
A wide woven teal and gold strap, soft on the shoulder
A proper zip right across the top
Pale lining and pockets, everything to hand
Caramel, which actually lifts navy, grey and brown
About the price
The Bodine is £34.95. It was £70.00.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that the autumn sale is on and the caramel is the one that goes first. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that a mark-down like that is usually where I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and weeks of carrying it every day, I have not found it. I will also say plainly that it is a leather-style finish rather than hide, because I would rather you heard that from me than found it out later.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women's words.
What I would tell you if we were friends
If you and I were sat in my kitchen and you asked me, this is what I would say. Go and look on top of your wardrobe. If there is more than one black handbag up there and you cannot say what made you pick any of them, then you have not got a collection, you have got a habit, and it is a habit the shops have been very happy to sell you.
I am not against a black handbag. I am against buying the fourth one without ever once asking myself whether I liked it.
Go and have a look while the caramel is still there. And do pick the one you actually want.
Caroline
BODINE | Vintage Bag With Strap
- Soft leather-style finish with a gently grained vintage look
- Wide woven strap in teal and gold, soft on the shoulder
- Gold clips at both ends and a buckle to set the length
- A proper zip right across the top
- Pale sand lining with a slip pocket and a zipped pocket
- Caramel, plus black, green and cream · one size
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The autumn sale is on now, half price. The caramel goes first.