Edith Young’s Hunt for Her Dream Workbag
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For years, I’ve been taking covert photos of good workbags I see on the shoulders of women on the street simply to confirm to myself that they exist. Sometimes I even cock my head at a briefcase. After much trial, error, and research, I found one that suited my small bathtub’s worth of belongings. It was the Freja Lafayette Tote: sleek with wide, comfortable straps, interior pockets galore, an upright posture, a magnetic clasp, and plentiful square inch–age in every direction. The price ($398) was notable but seemed commensurate with its quality and didn’t make me blush.
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After I left a job that required a bulky 16-inch laptop and switched to a slim MacBook Air, however, the Freja itself suddenly felt too heavy. Often I’d carry a cotton tote inside it to distribute the weight evenly to spare my back. While some days I halved my commute time using a Citi Bike, I could not — in good conscience and good posture — walk 30 minutes with such heft. So I set out to find a new workbag.
My dream bag would be lightweight, made of a weather-resilient material with long, thin straps that stay in place and able to stand up on its own. It wouldn’t be an aesthetic departure from my typical garments, and it would fasten at the top to protect my sketchbook from rain. It could strap into a Citi Bike basket with ease, and it wouldn’t feel like a chore to lug it around multiple neighborhoods in a day.
The runners-up
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The first contender in my search was the Nimes Bonarda Bag ($335), whose single slender strap caught my eye. It’s produced in Buenos Aires and has the most elegant profile of the bags I tried; it’s a pleasure to place on a hook under a bar because it doesn’t hog all the legroom. It’s made of vegetable-tanned natural leather with a soft, unlined finish inside and looks like it’s from a French flea market.
On my bike, I don’t trust my phone in the front pocket when flying over potholes, but this bag fared remarkably well when I went from Brooklyn Heights to Gowanus with a two-pound tub of Greek yogurt enclosed. It’s lovely for someone who carries a slightly lighter load than I do, but with one magnetic closure, I feared a “yard sale” wipeout if I so much as looked at an uneven patch of pavement the wrong way.
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Once you clock a Freitag in New York, you start seeing them everywhere. The Swiss brand upcycles truck tarp into one-of-a-kind cityproof bags. The F14 Dexter I tested is super-compact, with adjustable messenger-bag straps for biking ease. The straps are repurposed seat belts: a little hot in the summer, but more comfortable than they are in the car. It was a bit too compact and heavy-duty for my needs, and I didn’t feel like it was bashert for the Freitag and me, but I understood the resilient bags’ vast appeal.
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Whenever I ask my closest friend where her latest tasteful bag is from, she always tells me it’s Madewell. So I had to try one myself. The brand’s Signature Woven Tote ($198) is straightforward: It has one interior pocket and no other hardware inside. It props itself up to a point. I like carrying it. When I saw the aforementioned friend, she asked me where it was from. But I could tell it would be stretched beyond its limits on days of more ambitious packing.
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The 1733 Daily Tote X11 ($400) was the largest one I tried, yet it fits easily into the basket of a Citi Bike. Even when it’s packed, it maintains a slim profile. It has a zip top, comfortable straps, exterior pockets that fit smaller iPads, and interior pockets that my architect sister-in-law (who also has the bag) reserves for tape measures. Still, it skewed a little sporty for some rooms I was bound to whisk it into, so my search persisted.
The winner
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When I’ve thought about designing my dream tote, the Loeffler Randall Mira Everyday Tote ($175) is as close as I come to that idea. Its long straps don’t slip off my shoulders, and the bag itself weighs just 20 ounces. As an ornery person who walks in the rain, I’ve found that the nylon exterior meets my water-repelling standards.
It zips shut, protecting all my precious papers and electronics, and is lined with eight pockets of varying sizes, ideal for my roaming apothecary of travel-size sunscreens and CBD capsules. There’s a flap on the other side of the bag that slips over a wheelie-suitcase handle. The only trade-off is where the bag hits my body: at the hip bone. This can cause some discomfort when I pack the tote with hard, heavy contents. Otherwise, it’s functional and aesthetically neutral — the chameleonic and deceptively simple kind of workbag I was looking for all along.
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