NEVERWORNS: I Quit, and So Did My Bag
There is a physical and psychological lightness that comes with a small bag.
Today for #NEVERWORNS, I’m talking about how leaving my job led me to dump my old bag. My former Vogue colleague Anny Choi of @themarketeditor, who is legendary for her epic taste, is shopping out this universe for us. Also, subscribe if you want to get freaky!
After I left my job a little over a week ago, I have felt lighter. I don’t mean that in an emotional sense. (I loved my job! I loved my colleagues!) I mean I physically feel lighter…I finally have nothing on my arm. For years—barring COVID when I worked from home—I’d schlep to work, stuffing my life in beat-up bags. A few years ago, I ditched my anonymous leather carryalls and flimsy totes and I graduated to carrying a vintage Louis Vuitton Multipli Cité Bag, which is a Y2K gem complete with a tiny luxe pocket on the side made for a flip phone. The Multipli, which is reminiscent of a chic diaper bag that an ’00s-era Victoria Beckham would stuff Pampers in, eventually turned into a chew toy after years of cramming my outdated laptop in it, thunking it onto those metal Citibike baskets, and letting it hang off of restaurant chairs. On Instagram, one user said the bag was: “the crustiest thing I’ve seen so far.” Woof. They weren’t wrong: Currently, the strap is stripped from so much use.
Blame all of that wear and tear on gravity: That bag was heavy, so of course the strap was disintegrating. But I was disintegrating from the bag, too! Me! I actually think the Multipli gave me a minor case of scoliosis. (I now have the spine of a 87-year-old Jewish man). Physical pain, sure, but there was also a psychological load that came with the big bag: I hated it and yet, I depended on it. During fashion week, I’d rush to shows with this monogrammed barnacle hanging off of my shoulder, knowing that with my trusty laptop jammed in there, I’d have to submit a review or report on someone walking or appearing or existing. (The XXL bag at fashion week is something that says “never a bride, always a bridesmaid!” Writers on a deadline are never just there to observe, you’re there to write and work in real time. I just happened to write and work in real time on a really heavy laptop.) Of course, I was never one of the chill girls who could type the news or a review on their phone. (That’s on me. No, that hangs off of me.) I became so used to hauling that laptop with me that eventually, that bag became a weigh-me-down comfort item. Without the weight of that battered canvas binky, I felt lost. I needed that luxury anchor.
I talked to my friend and former Vogue colleague Anny Choi of @themarketeditor—who is also shopping out this post—about the woes of the workhorse bag. While heading to the office, she’d do a double-bag—a “hah” for all the perverts reading!—and pack her designer bag into a hulking L.L. Bean tote. “When you spent 8am to 10pm—sometimes, almost always later—working or doing work-related things, you needed to lug your entire life with you ALWAYS,” says Choi. “I was paying rent on an apartment but really, I was living out of my L.L. Bean.” For me, this tiny-big-bag combo was the ultimate Debbie Downer of bag-carrying. I always considered it lipstick-on-a-pig: You can pretend that you’re glam with that fab baguette or pochette, but eventually, you gotta haul a sad sack around like everyone else!
But whether or not I was used to this used-and-abused LV albatross on my arm, I always hungered for a tiny bag that was impractical for my way of laptop-lugging life. A girl can dream. Actually, a girl can have nightmares. Can you imagine when the shoulder bag craze came out? I was so depressed. And hell, I wrote about it for Vogue way back in 2018. Literally the URL for it is: underarm-bags-kendall-bella-gucci. That’s bonafide cool-girl-SEO gold, which just wasn’t me, even though I had a Gucci shoulder bag sitting right in my closet. During fashion week, I’d be hauling this LV landfill of a bag from subway to show, only to see these well-rested Danish influencers with chestnut tresses show up in their little boots and wearing those cute-thang shoulder bags that I reported about. Like I said, always a bridesmaid, never a bride!
But enough about the big-bag bitching: When I believe in the power of a great bag, I always think of Lauryn Hill in “Everything Is Everything” (1998). It’s the most delicious of late ’90s productions. The subject—Hill—is an aspirational dream of how I thought of New York: saucy clothes and a boundless city to explore pre-9/11—and pre-major cellular tech. In the music video, Hill is walking–no, she’s running!—down a New York City avenue with a square orange ostrich Fendi bag tucked under her arm. While galloping in her low-slung faded denim skirt and cropped denim jacket she looks just so free and so happy. In fact, she’s able to Baywatch-jog with that piece casually and snugly sitting below her pit, past all of those sad corporate cogs. During the same music video, Hill’s light-footed prance is contrasted a scene at the timestamp of 3:02, which shows a fuming woman, who has a mammoth tote slung over her shoulder, and is screaming into a payphone.
The light-bag-way-of-life moment is also especially visible in the beginning of the tropetastic Devil Wears Prada (2006). In the first scene, which opens with the jarring tune of “Suddenly I See” by KT Tunstall, most of these women—who obviously all worked on print because of the movie’s era and…well, just because!—are getting ready as ladies do. They are slipping into their lace-trimmed lingerie sets, unrolling their pantyhose on their slender shins, carefully curling their lashes, and eventually, are hailing a cab with a lil’ shoulder bag dangling from the bend of their elegant elbow. They just got that ease.
After all, the small bag symbolizes a certain put-togetherness. You’re literally weightless sans worries. You can lift your little arm to hail a cab while the bag is still delicately balanced on there, which is a fab image that I swear I’ve seen in editorials before. (That breezy effect is just not there while calling an Uber with a filled-to-the-brim burlap fused to your wrist. Spare me!) Also with a shoulder bag, you can also truly sprint around the city, far beyond any woman who is tilted by her tote of troubles.
Currently, I’m dawdling around with that tiny Gucci monogrammed Jackie bag that’s been hanging around in my closet unused. (Tom Ford-era…I’d never shell out for that new Michele stuff). I’m learning that the light bag is an essence. It’s the ability to roam; to actually do the office then dinner-thing or afterparty-thing that we always write about without something literally weighing you down. That gargantuan bag soldered to the crook of your neck is a constant reminder that there is something—probably gargantuan—to type up in the AM. And hell, now that I quit my job, if I ever run out of cash, I might just be ok. I could always sell this little Gucci number for some extra moolah. I barely ever used it, anyway.
Here, see the best shoulder bags picked by Choi for the post-office life. And even if you are in a cubicle on the daily, try one for a weekend. Also, someone get Gia Kuan’s lime green Moschino suit from #NEVERWORNS, the show! Also, before you peep the bags, subscribe, duh!
I can never deny the utility of a good tote/big structured bag but they carry such strong maternal connotations that I don't think I can bring myself to go there for another decade yet (sorry mum, I love you and your posh black totes). They're undoubtedly v. useful but it's impossible to feel footloose and fancy-free, or unburdened anyway, with one.
and so here I am, carrying an oxblood one the size and shape of a briefcase, and its smaller black sister which is just about big enough to fit a fat wallet, phone, keys and lip balm/stick and maybe a little tube of sunscreen if I push it. The first reads "I came here from work" if I ever take it anywhere that isn't the office, the second isn't sexy but is perfect for touristing (the usual bum bag just feels like a "PLEASE MUG ME" sign over my head). But I would like to experience more decorative smaller (but not absurdly small) bags e.g. the Lanvin Happy, it's such a pretty bag.
Along with an oversized tote crammed with bags, I carried around issues of W, Vogue and Elle because (of course) phones were not the geniuses they are today...