At 62, a stranger at the bus stop talked me out of forty years of handbags
At 62, a stranger at the bus stop talked me out of forty years of handbags
Six things this printed backpack gets right that forty years of handbags never did, from a woman who spent a whole bus ride looking at somebody else's sunflowers.
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 a handbag on my right shoulder since I was twenty. Through two children, a long marriage and more bus queues than I could count, I never once thought a bag was worth writing to anybody about. Well. I have changed my mind, and it took a stranger at the bus stop to change it.
The bag I am writing about is from the floral backpack collection at Nottingham Boutique, a small boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. They are backpacks with a whole picture on the front, and there are twenty-one designs. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for others to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
My friend Sue and I take the bus to Southwell for the Saturday market most weeks, a list we never stick to and a cake we always do. A few weeks ago a woman sat across from us with a backpack on her knee, big yellow sunflowers and little butterflies on black. I had her down as somebody's granny minding a school bag. Then we all got off, and she went up the steps into the market place ahead of us with both hands free, one on the rail and one holding a bag of apples, while Sue and I hitched our handbags back up our shoulders every ten yards. In the tea room she hung it on the back of her chair by a little loop at the top and sat down like a woman with nothing to carry. So I asked her, plainly, where it was from. Read on.
Here is what forty years of carrying bags taught me. They come in two piles. Handbags, which look nice, live on one shoulder, slide off your good coat and leave you one hand for everything. And backpacks, which I always thought were black nylon things for schoolchildren and men who go up hills.
A bag was either pretty and a nuisance, or sensible and grim. I had never seen one that let a woman my age keep both her hands and still look like she had made an effort.
This is the first one I have owned that does. I have had it through a wet October now, a few market days and one long walk round the lake, and it comes down to six things.
The afternoon it came. I sat on the bed and just looked at it for a minute.
It does not look like a school bag
Mine is called the Marigold. The whole front is a picture on a black background with a soft quilted look: big golden sunflowers down both sides, the biggest one at the bottom in the middle, a large pale blue butterfly in the centre and little yellow and pink ones dotted about, which you only notice when you are sat across from it. Everything else is plain black, the sides, the edging, the straps. So it reads as a picture you happen to be carrying, not as a rucksack. On a grey November morning it is the brightest thing at the bus stop, and I have stopped minding that.
A sit down by the lake. Sunflowers in November.
I was worried it would look like a school bag. It does not. Two women asked me about it in the queue at the post office.
Brenda K., NewarkTwo straps, and both your hands back
This is the one that sold me, watching that woman go up the steps. The boutique says the two shoulder straps spread the weight evenly so you can carry it comfortably all day, and I will put it in my own words. Nothing slides off. Nothing has to be hitched back up. I can hold the rail on the steps, pay at the market stall, carry a bag of apples and still get my gloves on, all without putting anything down on a wet pavement. After forty years of one hand, I had forgotten what two felt like.
I walk with a group on a Wednesday and I was always the one fiddling with a shoulder bag. Not any more. Both hands free and it sits nicely.
Margaret D., SouthwellA little loop at the top to hang it up
The woman in the tea room hung hers on her chair by the loop, and that small thing is half the reason I asked her. There is one short handle at the top of the bag. It goes on the back of a café chair instead of the floor, where my handbags always ended up, and on the peg in the hall when I get in. It is also how you grab it off the seat when the bus pulls in and you realise it is your stop.
On the peg in the hall, next to my coat. It lives there now.
The top loop is so handy. Mine hangs on the back of the kitchen door and goes straight on when I go out.
Jean P., BinghamOne zip, and everything stays in
It closes with a zip round the top, and that is all there is to it. No flap, no buckles, no clips to fight with in cold fingers. I zip it up in the hall and I do not think about it again until the tea room. I like that it is simple. I have owned handbags with so many little compartments that I lost my keys in my own bag more often than I lost them in the house.
Nice smooth zip and nothing fiddly. Open, shut, off you go.
Pauline R., RetfordIt holds a proper day out
It measures 28 × 11 × 39 cm, which in my terms is about the height of a bread bin and not much wider than a hardback. The boutique says there is room for your purse, phone, keys, a book and a bottle of water, and that is exactly what goes in mine on a market day, with my reading glasses and my gloves on top. It is roomy without being a great sack you lose things in, and it does not stick out so far behind that you knock people on the bus.
The night before market day. Purse, book, glasses, water. That is a day out.
Fits everything I need for a day in town and it is not huge. Purse, phone, a bottle of water and my book with room to spare.
Christine A., MansfieldTwenty-one designs, every one the same price
There are twenty-one designs in the collection, all the same price, and they are not all flowers. There is a red poppy meadow, a starry night with sunflowers, a moonlit forest, a little camper van by a campfire, a mosaic tree of life and a gold dragonfly on navy. Sue went straight for the poppies. My husband has started looking at the camper van one in a way I do not trust.
Bought the tree one for my sister's birthday and liked it so much I went back for a sunflower one for me.
Valerie S., ArnoldThis, against the bags you have been making do with
You can carry on with a handbag sliding off your shoulder, or a black rucksack that makes you look like you are off up a mountain, like I did for forty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
One shoulder, one free hand
Slides off your coat every ten yards
On the café floor or on your knee
Sensible and dull, or pretty and useless
A handful of colours, if that
Two straps, both hands free
Weight spread evenly, nothing to hitch up
A top loop to hang it on the chair
A whole picture on the front
Twenty-one designs, same price
About the price
The Marigold is £32.95 at the moment. It was £66.00. Every design in the collection is the same price, and there is one size, 28 × 11 × 39 cm.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are in their sale while the first stock goes, and once a design sells through, that one is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than £66.00 for a handbag that gave me a sore shoulder by Christmas, so £32.95 for a bag that hands me both my hands back made it an easy yes.
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.
If you are still walking round with a handbag strap sliding off your good coat, I would start here. Have a look at the designs before somebody else takes your favourite. And if you ever see a woman go up the steps at Southwell market with sunflowers on her back and both hands free, give her a wave. It might be me.
Caroline
The Floral Backpack Collection
- Twenty-one designs, the whole front a picture
- Marigold: sunflowers and butterflies on black
- Two shoulder straps, both hands free
- Top loop to hang it up, zip closure
- One size, 28 × 11 × 39 cm, roomy for a day out
- Free UK delivery and 30 day returns
The sale is on now. Every design is the same £32.95.