I am 68 and I carried a handbag on one shoulder for fifty years. A woman on the Settle train talked me out of it.
I am 68 and I carried a handbag on one shoulder for fifty years. A woman on the Settle train talked me out of it.
Six things these two printed backpacks get right that fifty years of handbags never did, from a woman who spent a whole train journey looking at a stranger’s sunflowers.
Pat Holloway · Customer · Leeds · 5 min read
I had better say who is talking first. I am Pat, I am 68, and I live in Leeds with my husband Brian and his spaniel Wilf. I have carried a handbag on my left shoulder since I was eighteen, through two children, three jobs and more bus queues than I could count, and I have never once thought a bag was worth writing to anybody about. Well. I have changed my mind, and it took a stranger on a train to change it.
The bags I am writing about are from the floral backpack collection at Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been quietly finding women like me the things we did not know we were allowed to have for a few years now. They are backpacks with a whole printed picture on the front, and there are twenty-one designs. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw one on the Settle line. My sister June and I take the train up from Leeds for the Tuesday market every month or so, a flask between us and a list we never stick to. Last month a woman sat across the table from us with a backpack on the seat beside her, sunflowers and little honeybees on royal blue. I had her down as somebody’s granny minding a school bag. Then we all got off at Settle, and she went up the hill into the town ahead of us with both hands free, one on the rail and one holding her coat shut against the wind, while June and I hitched our handbags back up our shoulders every ten yards. In the tea room she hung it on the back of her chair by a little loop at the top and sat down like a woman with nothing to carry. So I asked her, plainly, where it was from. She told me, and then she told me she had a second one at home with a tree on it. Read on.
The sunflower one, on the hook by my front door. It lives there now, next to my boots.
Here is what fifty years of carrying bags taught me. They come in two piles. Handbags, which look nice and live on one shoulder, slide off your good coat, and leave you with one hand for everything. And backpacks, which I always thought were black nylon things for schoolchildren and men who climb hills.
A bag was either pretty and a nuisance, or sensible and grim. I had never once seen one that let a woman my age keep both her hands and still look like she had made an effort.
These are the first I have owned that do. I have had them through a wet October now, two market days and one long walk, and it comes down to six things.
The morning they came, laid out on the bed. Sunflowers for me, the tree for June.
It does not look like a school bag
The sunflower one is called the Beatrice. The whole front is a printed picture: a big yellow sunflower at the top on a royal blue background, its stem and leaves running down the middle, more sunflowers coming in from the edges, and five or six little honeybees dotted about, which you only notice when you are sat across from it. Everything else is plain black, the sides, the edging, the straps. So it reads as a picture you happen to be carrying, not as a rucksack. On a grey Tuesday in October it is the brightest thing on the platform, and I have stopped minding that.
By the window, going up past the hills. June says it is better company than me.
I was worried it would look like I had pinched my grandson’s school bag. It does not. Three people asked about it at the garden centre.
Brenda T., GargraveTwo straps, and both your hands back
This is the one that sold me, watching that woman go up the hill. The boutique says the two shoulder straps spread the weight evenly so you can carry it comfortably all day, and I will put it in my own words. Nothing slides off. Nothing has to be hitched back up. I can hold the rail on the station steps, pay at the market stall, carry a bag of apples and still get my gloves on, all without putting anything down on a wet pavement. After fifty years of one hand, I had forgotten what two felt like.
June, a few yards ahead of me on the lane, wearing hers properly. I did not ask before I took it.
I walk with a group on a Thursday and I was always the one fiddling with a shoulder bag at every stile. Not any more. Both hands free and it sits nicely.
Margaret L., HellifieldA little loop at the top to hang it up
The woman in the tea room hung hers on her chair by the loop, and that small thing is half the reason I asked her. There is one short handle at the top of the bag. It goes on the hook by my front door when I come in, and on the back of a café chair instead of the floor, where my handbags always ended up. It is also how you grab it off the seat when the train pulls in and you realise it is your stop.
The top loop is so handy. Mine hangs on the back of the kitchen door and goes straight on when I go out.
Jean R., Long PrestonOne zip, and everything stays in
It closes with a zip that runs round the top and down the sides, and that is all there is to it. No flap, no buckles, no clips to fight with in cold fingers. I zip it in the hallway and I do not think about it again until the tea room. I like that it is simple. I have owned handbags with so many little compartments that I lost my keys in my own bag more often than I lost them in the house.
Nice smooth zip and no fiddly bits. I am useless with clasps these days and this is just open, shut, off you go.
Pauline H., EarbyIt holds a proper day out
It measures 28 × 11 × 39 cm, which in my terms is about the height of a bread bin and not much wider than a hardback. The boutique says there is room for your purse, phone, keys, a book and a bottle of water, and that is exactly what goes in mine on a market day, with my reading glasses and a folded rain hat on top. It is roomy without being a great sack you lose things in, and it does not stick out so far behind that you knock people on the train.
June’s, the night before a market day, on her kitchen table. Flask, apple, glasses. That is a day out.
Fits everything I need for a day in town and it is not huge. Purse, phone, a bottle of water and my book with room to spare.
Christine W., BarrowfordTwenty-one designs, every one the same price
The second one is the Sylvia, and it was always going to be June’s. A tree with dark branches and leaves in red and orange and gold and plum, a bright aqua sky above it and a patchwork of pinks and yellows below, like a church window in autumn. There are twenty-one designs in the collection, all the same price, and they are not all flowers. There is a red poppy meadow, a starry night with sunflowers, a moonlit forest, a little camper van by a campfire, and a gold dragonfly on navy. June has not given the Sylvia back, and Brian has started looking at the camper van one in a way I do not trust.
The pair of them on a bench in Settle, waiting for us to finish our tea.
Bought the tree one for my sister’s birthday and liked it so much I went back for a sunflower one for me. Lovely bright colours.
Valerie M., ColneThese backpacks, against the bags you have been making do with
You can carry on with a handbag sliding off your shoulder, or a black rucksack that makes you look like you are off up Pen-y-ghent, like I did for fifty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
One shoulder, one free hand
Slides off your coat every ten yards
On the café floor or on your knee
Sensible and dull, or pretty and useless
A handful of colours, if that
Two straps, both hands free
Weight spread evenly, nothing to hitch up
A top loop to hang it on the chair
A whole printed picture on the front
Twenty-one designs, same price
About the price
The Beatrice is £32.95, down from £66.00, and so is the Sylvia. Every design in the collection is the same price, and there is one size, 28 × 11 × 39 cm.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that these are in their sale while the first autumn stock goes, and once a design sells through, that one is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid more than £66.00 for a handbag that gave me a sore shoulder by Christmas, so £32.95 for a bag that hands me both my hands back made it an easy yes. Twice.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If you are still walking round with your handbag strap sliding off your good coat, this is where I would start. Have a look at the designs before somebody else takes your favourite, because the first autumn stock will not wait. And if you ever see a woman go up the hill from Settle station with sunflowers on her back and both hands free, give her a wave. It might be me.
Pat
THE FLORAL BACKPACK COLLECTION
- Twenty-one printed designs, the whole front a picture
- Beatrice sunflowers and Sylvia tree of life
- Two shoulder straps, both hands free
- Top loop to hang it up, zip closure
- One size, 28 × 11 × 39 cm, roomy for a day out
- Free UK delivery
Sale on now. The first autumn stock is already going.