Bags

As usual at the beginning of each year, I buy a new messenger bag and it has become part of a regular routine for me. It's not because I like to buy a new bag every year - (Ok I lie; that may be a small part of it!) - but mostly because a lot of the bags don't last longer than a year*.

The Jeep bag I had during sixth form was pretty strong, had a big main compartment/zipped pockets/ seperate orgnaiser and it didn't look to bad either. However after two years it began to look a bit frayed due to the wear and tear. For the beginning of my undergraduate degree, I bought a grey Animal bag. Although it only had one main compartment, it did have numerous zipped pockets and padding which gave it some shape and made it A LOT more comfortable to carry around. The bag lasted longer than a year (three in fact!) and the only reason I stopped using it was because I decided it was time for a change during my clinical placement. In place of it, I went out and bought a light blue Ripcurl bag; again it looked good, had lots of different compartments but it was disappointing however as the bag only made it up to about 6 months before the stitching gave way. With no time to shop around (shocking I know!) I reverted back to my old animal bag.

A new year has begun and again I'm searching for a new bag. Herein lies the problem;

-Bags that I want do NOT exist any longer

-Those bags that do sort of match my checklist are ridiculously over priced.

So after shopping around a bit and a lot of feedback (Twitter's great for that sorta thing), I compiled the following list.

Timbuk2
Heard of these guys from numerous sources and I like the fact you get to design your own bag. However that in turn pushes the price right up and also not many of these bags looked very feminine yet the Aeon bag caught my eye. I thought it was a tad expensive (roughly £50). However after shopping around a bit, I thought why not. I’d heard from various people that they were really good quality bags (Twitters recommendations) and settled on the aeon bag in a gunmetal grey colour with the logo in bright blue. By the time I got round to ordering it, the grey colour had been discontinued and I have no idea why?! Very annoying!

Crumpler
Liked a lot of these designs and also loved the fact that I could order these bags without any hassle (i.e. those countries that do not ship internationally or that have extortionate shipping costs like Timbuk2). I quite like the ‘Cheesytina’ bag and again roughly priced around the £40/£50 mark. The added bonus was that I could actually have a look at some of these bags, as certain stores do stock them. So off I went to TK Maxx to have a look at some samples and I even found the one that I wanted (Cheesytina). It had a good organiser section and it was well padded. The shoulder strap was a bit too big for my liking but it was detachable so I bought the bag. After getting home, I realised that the bag couldn’t quite fit a A4 folder and kept the zip kept snagging when I tried to close it. Unfortunately it had to be returned :( Built
I have to say none of these really appealed in terms of functionality but in terms of deigns and colour, they look fab. A friend of mine at uni who bought a laptop bag, mentioned how although he liked the neoprene material, he hated the fact that it didn’t really retain its’ shape when it was packed full of his books, laptop and other stuff. Pakuma
Recommended by my uncle. I did like some of the designs, specifically the Choroka K3s but felt it was a bit on the small side and felt that the Choroka K2 would be a better size - a cross between the two would be nice. Also the padding for the laptop compartment I thought was a bit in excess perhaps, but I guess it’s better to be cautious sometimes.
Rickshaw
I have NEVER heard of these guys before and I totally love their designs (thank you twitter!). The Med commuter messenger bag is a great size, lots of separate compartments and great designs such as the ‘London Plaid’ which is my favourite design. The only thing holding me back is the price. £50 for a bag was pushing it but double the price at nearly £96 seems to be a little bit too much. I do really like it though :p *The only exception to this would be the grey animal bag that I still have as my 'back up bag' as numerous successors have let me down on more than one occasion.