A letter from a reader

At 67, I realised the oldest thing I was wearing was my handbag

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to carry.

But four different women asked me about my bag at a garden party a fortnight ago, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

It started in June, with the photographs from my granddaughter's graduation. I was scrolling through them on the sofa with her, rather pleased with myself, because I had bought a new blue dress for it and had my hair done.

Nan, why do you take that big black bag everywhere?

And there it was in every single photograph. A summer dress, bare arms, flat sandals, and hanging off my forearm like an anchor, a great black leather handbag I have carried since before I retired.

I did not choose that. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides to carry winter around with them in July. It happens quietly, one sensible purchase at a time, until one day your granddaughter says it out loud.

How it happens

You buy one good dark handbag, because that is what you are told to do. Buy well, buy once. Something that goes with everything and will not show the marks.

And it does go with everything, in the sense that it goes with nothing in particular.

Then it simply becomes the bag. It sits by the door. It holds your purse and your glasses and a folded carrier bag and a packet of tissues from a wedding in 2019, and you pick it up without thinking every time you leave the house, in November and equally in July.

What did not help was the shops. Go and look at what they offer us for the summer. Either a flimsy straw basket that a bottle of milk would go straight through, or a stiff structured thing in navy that looks like you are on your way to a funeral. There is not much in the middle, and after a while you stop going to look.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I think a lot of us have.

I had decided that woven summer bags were not for me. I thought they were flimsy, that they held nothing, that everything would fall through the holes and the straps would stretch and dig into my shoulder by lunchtime.

It turns out that was never woven bags. That was cheap woven bags.

I have paid proper attention to this since, and the difference is in three things. Whether the weave is dense enough to hold its own shape rather than collapsing into a sack. Whether the straps are made to carry a real weight. And whether somebody has bothered to line the inside, which is the whole difference between a decorative basket and a bag you can actually use.

Get those three right and a woven bag is not a compromise at all. It is lighter than leather, it is cooler to carry, and it looks like somebody made it rather than stamped it out. That took me until 67 to work out.

The bag is called the Clare

It is from Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

The bag is called the Clare. A large handwoven crochet tote in a warm natural ivory, with an open geometric weave you can see the light through, and two long straps in a rich brown leather-look that give the whole thing a bit of polish. There is a khaki as well, which I will come back to.

The first thing I noticed was the weight, or rather the absence of it. Picking it up after eleven years of black leather was like being handed an empty basket, and my shoulder noticed the difference within a day.

The second thing was the inside. It is properly lined in a soft cream fabric, with a zip and a small pocket, so nothing slips through the weave and I can find my keys without emptying the whole thing onto a bench. The top is open, which means you reach straight in rather than wrestling with a clasp.

And it is fourteen inches across, which in practical terms means a cardigan, a book, a bottle of water and a bag of plums all went in on Saturday and it still did not look stuffed.

What happened at the garden party

I carried it for the first time to Ruth's garden party, with the blue dress and my flat sandals.

Four women asked me where it was from. Four. One of them was Barbara, who I have known for thirty years and who has never once commented on anything I have worn.

She said I looked like I had been somewhere nice. Coming from Barbara, that is practically a standing ovation.

What I noticed more than the compliments, though, was that I stopped thinking about it. I was not shifting it from arm to arm or putting it down under a chair and forgetting where. It sat on my shoulder for four hours and I did not think about it once.

The next morning I put it straight back on and walked into the market with it, and filled it with vegetables and a bunch of sweet peas, and it looked just as right as it had at the party.

Three things I have learned since

One. The straps are the whole thing. They are long enough to go over a shoulder rather than being carried in the crook of your arm, and they are wide and smooth rather than a thin cord, so there is no digging in. That is the difference between a bag you carry all day and one you put down.

Two. Lined matters more than anything. I had always assumed the lining was a detail. It is not. It is the reason a bag with holes in it can hold a phone, a purse and a set of keys without you ever worrying about any of them.

Three. It goes both ways. Smart enough for a garden party with a dress, ordinary enough for the market on a Tuesday. I have not found an occasion yet where it looks like the wrong choice.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Clare is £49.95. It was £100.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because a handwoven bag with real lining and proper straps is not usually a fifty pound item.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a summer sale to shift the season's stock before it turns.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. Real people, mixed opinions, mostly very good.

Then I ordered the khaki one as well.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Go and look at what is hanging by your front door. If it is dark, and heavy, and you have had it long enough that you cannot remember buying it, then it is very likely doing more to age what you wear than anything actually on you.

It is the easiest thing in the world to change, and it costs less than a dress. That is really the whole of my advice.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the natural ivory is the one that goes first, which I found out because I went back for a second and had to wait. And once the summer stock has sold through, that is it until next year.

The black bag has not been off its hook since June.

Maggie