Laura Jackson’s Hot Takes: Carry Your Life
Hot Takes is a new monthly series on the things that make life better. Our creative director, Laura Jackson’s lends her lens on a tightly edited selection of what’s worth knowing about. First up: Bags Made for Living.
I have opinions. Most of them are about details: which condiment, which chair to sit on, which pencil to write with - and which bag. For years they've lived in voice notes to the team, and it felt like a waste. So, Hot Takes. Every month, one subject and a handful of things I'd happily defend at dinner. Some you'll agree with. Some you might not.
We're starting with bags. I’ve never really been a tiny bag person. I like having my things with me. Laptop, charger, lip balm, book, snacks, ROCCO eye masks, something belonging to one of my children, and a whippet poo bag (empty OFC). There’s something reassuring about carrying a little bit of your life around with you.
Maybe that’s why I think about bags less as fashion and more as objects we live with. They carry the physical evidence of the mental load - work, family, travel, all the things we might need between leaving the house and eventually making it home again. A good one becomes a sort of security blanket.
I can appreciate a beautiful designer bag - and I own a few - but the bags I really love are the ones that earn their place. The one you grab for the train, the school run, a meeting, a weekend away. The one that somehow makes carrying your whole life around feel a little bit easier.
I’m travelling a lot at the moment, so I’ve become slightly obsessed with them (how many pockets did you say?) These are the bags I want to live with.
One bag should do three jobs
The Alex Mill tote goes to the office, to lunch and away for the weekend, and looks like it meant to. It has double handles for carrying by hand and shoulder straps that tuck away when you don't need them. Inside, there's a zip pocket for the things you can't lose. The canvas is garment-washed, so it arrives looking like it's already been somewhere. Have it monogrammed and nobody will walk off with it.
Buy your next bag from a gardening shop
The Niwaki Kantan bag, from Niwaki's limited-edition capsule with YMC. It's a weatherproof canvas bucket bag with a PVC-lined base, made to carry tools without being cut to pieces by them. That's also a fair description of my handbag. It has one adjustable strap, so you can carry it by hand or over the shoulder, and one interior pocket for keys. It goes to the allotment, the market and the school gate, and nobody at the school gate knows it's for pruning.
Silver is a neutral
Christopher's new Mulberry is a Bayswater in crinkled metallic silver leather. It comes from a limited-edition series made from surplus and sample leathers in Mulberry's archive, so there's only one of each. It's easy to find in a dark footwell, and it cheers up a grey commute.
A tote should survive a spilt coffee
The Coming of Age tote is gingham PVC on the outside and raw silk taffeta on the inside, handmade in New York. You can wipe it down after the beach, the market or a leaking water bottle, and it still feels like a treat every time you open it. It has no closure, so it's not one for the Tube at rush hour.
Stop saving suede for best
Bleue Burnham made a run of gardening bags to go with her New Balance 991v1, in the same suede and contrast stitching as the shoes. Suede, for soil. It's the kind of decision that makes you rethink the suede you've got wrapped in tissue at the back of the wardrobe. It marks, it softens, and it looks better for being used. There are only thirty of these, all given away as gifts, but the point stands. Take yours out in the rain.
Every bag needs a bag in it
The Standard Baggu, which folds down into its own flat pouch about 13cm square, so it lives at the bottom of whatever else I'm carrying. Unfolded, it holds two or three carrier bags' worth of shopping and takes up to around 22kg. It's made from one continuous piece of recycled ripstop nylon, and it goes in the washing machine. It's there when I pass a greengrocer, when the school bag splits, and when I've bought more at a market than I meant to.
Towelling isn't only for the bathroom
I've spent this whole piece telling you about other people's bags, so here's mine. I love bags so much I've made one for ROCCO. It's towelling, a fabric most of us only think of for bath sheets and dressing gowns, in my favourite colour: deep red with a pink stripe. Yes, the same ROCCO as the eye masks at the bottom of my bag! Live 5th October.
