Don't Toss Your Shopping Bags
Brands are back with flaunting the shopping bag; now I’m hauling groceries in mine.
Today on NEVERWORNS, I’m delving into…shopping bags. I can’t get rid of mine. I own some from places I’ve never even shopped at. But why? There is something about how shopping bags in their construction and design often reflect the brands themselves. Also, what about using shopping bags to run errands? Sounds like Gwyneth in A Perfect Murder. Chic. PS. Watch the latest NEVERWORNS episode here with
…more episodes coming soon!I’ve been seeing shopping bags more and more recently. I can’t unsee their hues; those big bold brands names. It’s beyond the Vogue piece I wrote last year about my own euphoric experience dragging a massive Hommegirls bag through the city. Now, I’m noticing shopping bags in the brandverse; in films. A few weeks ago, J. Crew posted an image of a woman walking across a midtown street with a searing green bag the size of a minivan door slung on her arm. Last week, Jenny Walton remixed Bergdorf Goodman bags by painting dame-babe tableaux on them: colorfully dressed women, piece of lacy lingerie, a splattering of heels. This past week, someone tagged me on an Instagram video of Estonian rapper Tommy Cash, known for his fashion week stunts, stumbling into the Maison Margiela show with arms full of post-spending-spree shopping bags.
Cash certainly looked like a glam freak, dramatically swaying side to side, cradling a tower of shoe boxes and holding a zillion bags. I spotted a narrow white Margiela bag, a pale pink Miu Miu bag, and a bag in that unmistakable Hermés orange. Only a few weeks before that, Balenciaga showed their ode-to-Erewhon pre-fall 2024 show with models walking down the runway with their little paper Erewhon bags. Cheeky, yes, but there is a point: If you shop at Erewhon but don’t have the bag, did you even shop at Erewhon?
The reemergence of the shopping bag as an accessory brings me back to my childhood room where there is a striped Sephora bag tacked onto the wall. I have no idea what I bought at the store itself—probably something under $20—but I have kept the bag ever since. What was I trying to say? Why didn’t I throw the piece out?
Shopping bags show how we consume; they are an accessory in themselves. We become a walking billboard, whether we’ve bought the smallest perfume or a shearling jacket from a brand. For its April 6, 1997 issue, The New York Times enlisted graphic designer Tibor Kalman to critique bag designs in a series called “Bag Crit” to accompany their special Stores coverage. The photographed bags—or “mobile ads”— were shown in the margins with a sometimes ruthless critique from Kalman. A Saks bag design was “wimpy” and looked like a “budget decision” while a striped Century 21 bag was a “Sorry looking thing” and reminded Kalman of “real estate.” Yikes. Kalman considered the Ivan Chermayeff-designed Barneys bag to be the holy grail of shopping souvenirs, and called it “by far the most beautiful bag on the streets of New York.”
Scathing reviews aside, what I love most about “Bag Crit” are people’s responses to the series. The next month after Kalman’s series, reader Laurie Gwen Shapiro wrote in to the Times that while she believed the Barneys bag was the “Rolls Royce of bags”, that there was also the red Macy’s bag, which she described as the “most functional and respectable — a good bag to use for giving a gift (a plate of brownies, perhaps, or several old books).” Another reader Rhoda Cohen wrote in the following: “Tibor Kalman’s ‘Bag Crit’ made it clear why the rest of us trek willingly and even happily from store to store. We do it for the shopping bags.”
The yesteryear allure of a luxury shopping bag still holds up. Recently, I was inspired to buy an old XXL Barneys bag off of Poshmark after watching A Perfect Murder (1998). Both Gwyneth Paltrow and Michael Douglas’ characters use the Barneys bag to run errands: Paltrow uses one to carry a massive espresso machine for her paramour from the UES to Greenpoint and Douglas uses one to carry a shoebox full of cash intended to pay off his wife’s murderer. If you’ve ever carried one of the Barneys bags, you’ll know it’s Paul Bunyon-sturdy but its design is Audrey Hepburn classic. And to have copped an XXL bag from the department store back in the day? The mere size suggests that you dropped some serious dinero. Currently, you can buy one of those gigantic bygone Barneys bag online for typically $25 and up: the bigger, the more expensive.
I find that A Perfect Murder characters using these luxury bags for tasks to be both chic and ridiculous. But the tony duo isn’t alone. Writer Rachel Tashjian relayed to me that in her midtown neighborhood, the go-to “errands bag” is a Bergdorfs bag. “Every woman at the dry cleaner brings her clothes in a Bergdorfs bag. I’ve seen people use them at Morton Williams as reusable grocery bags,” writes Tashjian. “I personally mailed several packages last week and carried my goods to the post office in a Bergdorfs bag.” Killer look. And why not put these bags to use? Their craftsmanship often echoes a quality synonymous with their department store provenance. Plus, a gorgeous shopping bag makes the act of doing a banal errand feel luxurious, meaning I can feel like a queen hauling a rotisserie chicken home in a jet black Barneys bag.
While some love a shopping bag moment, others dislike carrying shopping bags altogether.
of Magasin, who is an anti-bagger, thinks trotting around with the jumbo paper sacks is a no-no. “The most shameful thing you could be seen with, from any store, especially a cool one,” she wrote to me. “Imo, you’re supposed to acquire things in secret like you ALWAYS had them.” When Reilly is shopping in the flesh, she carries a larger regular handbag to stick in her purchases. “im very ‘oh i dont need a bag’ at the register,” she adds. “I take the tissue wrapping and run.” Ok I get it! Secrecy is elegant; it always has been. A quiet luxury perspective of shopping bags…it exists! And, sure, maybe it can be gauche to carry around several of these logo-slathered, disposable babies; no one wants to be looked at like an out-of-control shopaholic.But then again, I love a flagrant flex of logomania and I adore proof of purchase. I am always delighted to see the maximalist images of the most fab Cher Horowitz in Clueless (1995) who seems to perpetually have a hoard of luxury shopping bags soldered to her. And who can deny the status symbol of a shopping bag? That’s the reason why teen-me kept that Sephora bag. For me, this dinky Sephora bag was connected to a coming-of-age place that I once deemed fancy and finally, I was able to get something from there. My trophy! Plus, I love that these bags are so well-crafted; and that it is also so deliciously demented to use a Bergdorfs bag to schlep around rolls of one-ply toilet paper. How we use the bag after the initial purchase can humble its luxury connotations.
When the menswear institution Jordamo on Orchard was going out of business back in September, I bought a bunch of vintage store posters and the owner sent me home with a supersized Brioni bag, emphasizing that it was a good bag. The handsome carryall is really something: an off-white that reminds me of a top-notch business card, thick paper with the girth of a firm Pendaflex file folder, and a ribbed cream ribbon handle. The brand’s blood red cursive logo sits in the bottom corner, subtle but unmistakably there. Soon after I left the store, a Brooklyn vintage dealer also purchased a handful of the supersized, dumbbell-strong Brioni bags. Mind you, I’ve never shopped from Brioni. And until the day I do purchase a super fine cashmere scarf from the label, I’ll toss my rotisserie chicken into the hauler. After all, it’s useful and stylish. What more is there to a great product?
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I'm weak for any shopping bag with nice cardboard and ribbon handles! and have hung on to - in my mind - nice ones with origins ranging from the V&A museum gift shop to Miller Harris to a GIANT one from Canali that held a (much less expensive than Canali thanks to a store closing sale but a chunk of my income nonetheless) Paul Smith suit. The Canali bag is now a bit torn at the top and was a bit too massive to ever make a schlepper if I wanted to be out in public, also large enough to put a small child in - evidence being my friend's toddler attempting to make it a 'house' - but that thing is built like a little tank and now serves as additional clothing storage.
but my true love is shoeboxes - my one pair of TRR Prada sandals from that Spring 2008 collection came in their shoebox with the James Jean fairy artwork, and the shoes don't enthuse me much but the box? That got immediate 'turn this into a shrine' status.
Worked at a manhattan designer boutique in the mid aughts when the logomania was at such a fever pitch, people would try to request separate bags for each individual item they purchased and we were forced to impose a bag quantity limit. The number of times I was on the receiving end of full blown screaming melt downs over shopping bags still scars me 😆