<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not a multi-thousand pound handbag from Herm\u00e8s that best captures the new era of It bags, but a \u00a3149 tote from John Lewis<\/a>.<\/p>\n Launched this season, it\u2019s deeper (45cm) and taller (33cm) than your average handbag, and comes loaded with good intentions. It\u2019s able to hold your packed lunch, flask and book, as well \u2013 at a push \u2013 as your gym kit. The high street retailer is calling it the Intentional tote bag<\/a>.<\/p>\n According to Carrie Cooper, John Lewis\u2019s senior footwear and accessories designer, it\u2019s \u201can all-day bag \u2013 you can fit your spare shoes, snacks and water bottle in but, rather than a more practical and functional tote, this feels more \u2018intentional\u2019 and a decision rather than a basic shopper\u201d. It is, she says, \u201coversized but not structured\u201d.<\/p>\n These \u201cgood intention\u201d bags, often deeper and less wide than totes of yore, focus on what they can hold rather than the space they take up. They are everywhere. Marks & Spencer have a suede equivalent<\/a> and one that comes with ruching and a drawstring<\/a>. Jigsaw calls its iteration a \u201cshopper\u201d<\/a>. Me+Em, the brand favoured by the working women of the Labour party, has a 36.5cm-long \u201csoft day bag\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n California climbing brand Gramicci offers a gorpcore version: a 40-litre ripstop tote that would happily hold your mason jar of overnight oats as well as a packable mac. The LA-based, Roman Coppola\u2013founded Pacific Tote Company makes cult sturdy canvas versions beloved of big names such as Anthony Hopkins and Alexa Chung. According to co-founder and creative architect Duffy Culligan, they don\u2019t think of them as \u201cshopping bags\u201d \u2013 \u201cthey\u2019re more like the co-conspirator of an unplanned adventure\u201d.<\/p>\n The good intentions bag is an antidote to the need to carry two receptacles \u2013 a handbag for show and then a tote for the actual stuff you need. And they might just be the final nail in the coffin for the flimsy totes cluttering up hallways up and down the country. Once hailed as a sustainable alternative to the plastic bag, the average cotton tote, according to the UN environment programme<\/a>, needs to be used between 50 and 150 times to offset its production, yet in reality less than 10% of totes are used more than three times.<\/p>\n \u201cI think there\u2019s a real \u2018tote fatigue\u2019 happening right now,\u201d says Culligan. \u201cEveryone\u2019s cities are flooded with flimsy promotional bags \u2013 there\u2019s a certain irony to carrying a repurposed grocery tote, but most of those are churned out cheaply in mass factories, and they fall apart in a month.\u201d<\/p>\n More often than not conspicuously branded, trumpeting Daunt Books, the New Yorker, or Paris\u2019s Shakespeare and Company, these totes were once understood in the mainstream to semi-innocently signal a cultured outlook. But now, read more performative than quietly impressive.<\/p>\n Even the tote 2.0, reinforced, more genuinely reusable and best summed up by the perplexing Trader Joe\u2019s phenomenon<\/a> \u2013 the US grocer\u2019s totes go for around $2.99 at home but thousands on resale sites globally \u2013 is arguably on its way out.<\/p>\n According to Bridget Dalton, a semiotician and cultural analyst at Truth Consulting<\/a>, the old fabric totes had obvious practical limitations. They \u201cmay indicate your cultural allegiance, but they slip off your shoulder and they\u2019re basically quite rubbish,\u201d she says. By contrast, good intention bags indicate a \u201cdedication to practicality\u201d.<\/p>\n Bags have always been loaded with ideas of gender, class and power, and the bags winning in this new accessories dawn are no different.<\/p>\n \u201cBig bags are more gender-neutral,\u201d says Dalton, referencing David Beckham and the enormous Herm\u00e8s bag he was spotted toting in Paris last week<\/a>. They are, she says, \u201ca sartorial stride towards equality; men and women carry[ing] the same stuff\u201d.<\/p>\n In terms of status, Dalton references the \u201cludicrously capacious\u201d bag insult from Succession<\/a>. \u201cEven a few years ago, a capacious bag is a signifier of being d\u00e9class\u00e9<\/em>, lower-class. It\u2019s an embarrassment.\u201d<\/p>\n This, she says, is crucial to this notion of good intentions. \u201cCarrying a lot of stuff around is a historically working-class requirement. So, therefore, you have the idea of a good intention as a peasant morality, which is about self-sustaining, self-reliance, but also a rejection of the frivolous.\u201d It\u2019s the opposite of the late 2010s trend for the intrinsically impractical tiny handbag<\/a>, barely big enough for a thimble let alone a flask.<\/p>\n Unlike the small or non-existent bags of the chauffeured, often failing-upwards characters of Succession, the good intentions bag is, according to Dalton, \u201ca statement that says my identity is not contingent upon other people doing stuff for me. I can be luxe, practical and unpretentious at the same time\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Filled #good #intention #bag #antidote #tote #Fashion<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s not a multi-thousand poun… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19383"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}