This lovely retro-style bag is made to carry over your shoulder, or on your bike. Made by the Goodordering Company of Hackney, East London (in England, for those of you who may still be half asleep), the bag can be quickly converted between shoulder bag, pannier (“saddlebag”) or handlebar bag.
LAS VEGAS — It’s a bit odd to be thanked for cussing; but that’s exactly what STM Bags owner Ethan Nyquist did when I walked over to the STM table during a press event at CES. Apparently he was considerably impressed with an enthusiastic exclamation I made about STM’s bags, in response to the announcement of one of their new backpacks*. Hey, what can I say — I’m a bag junkie, and I get passionate about stuff I like.
So here then, is a prediction: STM’s new Drifter will deepen the outfit’s rep as a maker of stellar bags.
I’m a huge fan of Rickshaw’s bags. Pretty much everyone in the Rickshaw office cycles to work, and it shows in the design of the bags. They’re well made, practical and light, but still full of clever design details. The Commuter 2.1 is no exception, somehow managing to offer a huge collection of pickets and cubbyholes, and yet remaining light enough to be more comfy on the shoulder than many more simple messenger bags.
Want to know more? Read on:
What would happen if you took a dork-o-lithic nylon “Executive Laptop Case” and tossed it onto a (giant) blender with a Chrome messenger bag? Well, I guess the blender would choke and break, but if you used a metaphorical blender then you’d end up with a slurry that could be turned into the Boa Nerve, a bag designed to take you “from the conference room to your bike.”
Looking for a $330 camera bag that looks like and old thrift-store leather satchel? Then look no further: The Brooklyn ONA Camera Bag is just such an enigma, a beautiful bag that can carry your gear in a safely padded interior. Or you could opt for my excellent alternative…
Rickshaw Bags, the finest bag-maker in San Francisco, will now sell you a plush-lined sleeve for your iPad Air. I have tested the mini version and I loved it, although I’d say it’s actually better suited to the bigger iPad thanks to the fact that the mini looks after itself so well, even when left naked and cold in the basement of a dark messenger bag.
Three letter ran through my mind the moment this photo of the LaFonction appeared on my screen: “W.T.F.” Then I pasted it into our Hipchat chatroom, where Killian said “Haha. WTF is that?!”
The answer? It’s a giant, €840 office-in-a-bag for your MacBook.
I’m an unashamed lover of Rickshaw bags, and the new Commuter 2.1 looks as good as any of the SF-based makers other bags. I actually tested the original Commuter way back in the mists of time and found it to be excellent but a little to bulky for me.
Now, though, my daily commute actually involves a bike ride across town instead of a two second lurch from bed to desk, and I do that ride on a Brompton with a front bag. And for this, the new Commuter looks to be ideal.
ISkin’s Gravity collection will gather up anything and everything that wanders into its orbit and trap it in its dorktastic embrace. The range consists of two cases, the best of which is the Agent 6 Sling, a utility pack that even an infantryman would find hard to make full use of.
I’m forever intrigued with Booq — a bag-maker headquartered just a stone’s throw from design-crazy Pasadena — and its maverick creations. The company’s latest is the Boa Shift backpack; while it doesn’t much that’s new, it seems to gather all their signature design elements into a single bag.
Not interested in a case for you new Retina iPad mini, or the gorgeous iPad Air? Nope, me neither – I want to show that thing off to passersby and pickpockets alike. But what I don’t want to do is carry it in my hand all the time, so I’ll be needing yet another bag for my man-sack collection. [1]
And that bag is the Outback Solo from WaterField Designs.
Just when I thought I’d kicked my bag-buying habit, along comes Waterfield and dangles the Staad backpack in front of my wallet. The Staad is a classic-looking waxed-canvas and leather backpack with some distinctly modern touches. And I want one. Now.
What happens when Brian Holmes of Pad&Quill decides to make actual bags for Macs and iPads? You get Intrepid Bags, leather satchels for “him and her” which are made with an almost absurd attention to quality. There are two models right now: the Journeyman (For Him) and the Lillium (For Her).
Some of you poor folks live in a country where the police has been militarized to such an extent that it’ll shoot its citizens just for pointing a cellphone at them wrong. So just what would your public “servants” (paid by you via your taxes) make of the Urban Holster, a neat-looking belt-bag that looks like nothing more than a place to stow a pistol?
What would a weekday be without an as-yet-unavailable Kickstarter project? It would be a day without hope, without longing for the future, and without… effortless style for the untamed spirit.
Yes, “Effortless Style for the Untamed Spirit” is indeed the slogan being used to pitch an organizer for your MacBook charger. Seriously.
It’s almost instinctive these days for me to place my iPhone or iPad facing in in whatever bag or pocket I use, to protect its screen from bumps. But the new Portal series of bags from Osprey might just make it worth breaking the habit: The bags have a pocket at the front with a flap that opens to let you use your iPad without removing it from the bag.
Designs from California bag outfitter Booq tend toward the highly unorthodox and original; the last time I wrote about one of their bags I even made a tongue-in-cheek suggestion that the company’s gear was designed by folks from outer space.
But with its square-jawed, establishment lines and pockets that open conventionally, Booq’s new $150 Boa brief laptop bag seems like it would look much more at home on the set of Mad Men than it would on the set of Battlestar Galactica.
Here’s a great idea for an iPad accessory – just kidding: it’s terrible! No, just kidding again. The idea is sound, but the implementation doesn’t really get past the lazy-computer-render stage.
It’s called the iBackPack (really) and it’s a way for cyclists to communicate with people behind them.
I’m a sucker for satchels. And with this beautiful canvas Mission Rucksack from Toffee, I can be a seersucker for satchels, because it also has a beautiful blue and white pinstripe lining.
I know what your asking yourself. You’re asking whether I really decided to write up this bag just so I could use that lame, alliterative gag about seersucking satchels. And the answer is yes. But the bag’s pretty cool anyway, right?
The Cocoon Grid-It, every geek’s favorite slightly-too-heavy travel organizer, has now been turned into a bag. It’s called the Slim, and it has enough straps and nooks to keep even a roomful of OCD freaks relaxed and happy.
This is the Cambridge Camera Bag, and it is supposedly inspired by the schoolbags of English children. Perhaps this was the case in past years, when only the privileged offspring of royalty and wealthy industrialists attended school, because these days English schoolkids drag their crap around in the same battered Eastpak backpacks as anyone else.
Not that this makes the Cambridge Camera Bag any less desirable. Quite the opposite, in fact, if you’ve ever met a genuine English hooligan.
You can already check in to a flight online, so why can’t you check your luggage? With a new luggage tag about to be trialed by British Airways, you can. And you can do it with your smartphone.
The Blokket is just about the most stupid, wrong-headed case I have seen in a while. It certainly looks nice enough, and I’d probably use it based on its cute tool-bag styling alone. But the case also blocks cell signals, letting you “turn off distractions” for a moment. I hope you like dead batteries.
You know who thinks I look hot when I wear this bag? Everyone, that’s who. From the young hipster laydeez to the local barrio ne’erdowells, everyone steals a glance at me when I sashay down the filthy dogs hit covered streets of my dirty Barcelona neighborhood. “Who is that guy?” their eyes seems to ask. “And why is he wearing that short-strapped red leather bag with those pink shorts?” their eyes continue, before rolling momentarily in what I like to think is ecstasy, but which is probably just exasperation.
The bag, though, is worth the attention, and it probably also worth more than its contents. At €180 ($240) it’s not cheap. But then, it’s pretty gorgeous.
Question: Do you associate complexity with value? That is, do you think that an object is worth more if it uses more parts in its construction? No? That’s absurd, right? But try this: the No.002 bag from Clean Everything is made from a single sheet of leather, cleverly cut and folded to form a bag. The price? €289, or $385.
