ManBags and Stationery…

It seems like everyone’s been talking manbags lately (started last Xmas, with my mum threatening to buy me one!) – is this the year they’ll really make it to the mainstream? I must confess to being a ManBag fan and active carrier for years – since the mid-Eighties I guess – I’ll try and put together a potted history of my ManBag carrying for fellow enthusiasts…

• 1980s – I started with a healthy interest in customising my school bags, the most memorable one being one of those workman’s tool bags made out of heavy-duty cotton. Straps that had failed under the strain of heavy books were repaired with nails, rivets, meccano and epoxy glue! At Uni I saw the trendy looking Scandinavian students with their black rucksacks edged with tan leather piping and I knew I had to have one, that I guess was my first paid-for ManBag purchase.
• 1990s – a couple of Next folio-type things and a pretty straight samsonite hard ABS briefcase were the low points before I discovered HiDesign. I took a fair amount of ribbing for my black-leather, satchel style case, and from then I knew I was different from everybody else…
• 2000s – at the turn of the century, or was it just before, I discovered skim.com (that’s another story in itself!) and soon fell in love with their take on the messenger bag. (Still got that one too). At the time I was using a small-ish laptop that just fitted nicely in the skim bag. Next bag of note was a Gap messenger sac, then I discovered Crumpler, around about the same time I got the world’s biggest laptop (Tosh Qosmio 😦 ) and apart from a full-sized suitcase, the Crumpler was about the only thing big enough to carry it ;-). Latest purchase is an A5-sized case from dr.ion (Japanese brand I think, can be found in larger PaperChase stores)…

One day I’ll get round to doing some pictures and do this piece justice.

Oh, and the “stationery” bit in the title – I’ve got this thing for pens too… maybe another day 🙂

cxf.