What’s in my bag?

I spend enough time looking at YouTube that the algorithm offers me weird and wonderful videos relating to my search history.

Recently, however, I’ve been offered some really out-there ones, with very few views, of people’s ‘journeys’ to ‘score’ Hermes Birkin or Kelly ‘Quota’ bags. I think this is a result of looking at the Vogue ‘What’s in my bag?’ series and interesting much, much lower-priced bag videos (current obsession is Atelier de Lumen, which I believe is a South Korean brand). (A Quota bag relates to being allowed to buy a Birkin or Kelly – finally, finally, according to these people – via 1) having a friendly Hermes customer service rep and 2) spending a lot on other Hermes items. Obviously, if you’re Beyonce, you don’t have to wait.)

Anyway, this all led me to think that I, the Posse’s own cinnamon, should do a What’s in my bag? post for your delectation and reading pleasure.

I will say that if someone were to drop a black Kelly in front of my door anonymously, I wouldn’t say no, but boy are these silly money. Like one basic bag is the cost of a number of holidays, and I’m not talking just two; it is more than my last car cost; it’s way more than the diamond studs (see last week’s post) I hanker after.

But I digress.

It used to be you only saw the Vogue videos, which are amusing and engaging. Now, everyone and their whatever thinks they can make a watchable video of what they carry around – which is simply not the case. One of my favourite Vogue ones is Hermione from Harry Potter (Emma Watson, but I think of her as Hermione) who is intelligent, amusing, well-spoken, etc. The problem with your vague fashion boy or girl doing said video is that they are decidedly not any of these characteristics – and, boy, do they carry a lot of rubbish around with them. (Small related digression: one vlogger I really like – she’s Japanese and the series is called Grown – did one of these and even hers was boring. It was a short segment in an otherwise fascinating vlog.)

But, hopefully, I can be relatively amusing about what I carry round on a given day.

The bag I am using currently was purchased mostly for the colour. In the past, particularly when I lived in NYC, I used black bags … because NY, finance. I have a beautiful but not terribly practical red bag bought years ago that used to be my going-to-New York bag when I went to the city once a year. This is a handbag only – no shoulder strap – and I once left it in the waiting area of a London airport, only realising I didn’t have it at the end of the jetway. Big zoom back. There it sat. No one had picked it up, thank goodness, as it had the passports, plane tickets (I had the boarding passes in my hand), wallet, phone, keys to my father’s apartment …

I also have a black evening bag I haven’t used in decades (having nowhere fancy to go in the evening) which is beautiful and was purchased at some chi chi store on Madison Avenue. This was before mobile phones. The only size it would take is an old Nokia clamshell.

Anyway, the current bag love, as noted, is olive green. Seriously, I never would have looked twice at this 10 years ago. Like the shape and it holds the things I usually need for running around (see here). And clearly it has both hand and shoulder straps so I’m much less likely to leave it somewhere.

I don’t haul my life around — and even when I needed a bigger bag for work it didn’t contain the kitchen sink.

So, what I do carry (starting from top left and moving down and to the right, and then down etc).

1) A cloth bag for shopping. Ugly as sin but weighs nothing and holds A LOT.
2) Wallet. Small – I cannot do big wallets.
3) iPhone. Small, old, needs to be charged almost daily. Works fine. (Place holder note in picture as, of course, phone is used for pic.)
4) Small Rhodia notebook. I write myself notes all over the place – in the notes function on my phone, iPad or laptop – which are at least synced; in my Filofax; in several notebooks (there’s also a bigger red Rhodia that went to Europe last year). Sometimes I try and systematise this but doesn’t last for long. I just to have to look in X, Y and Z until I find the note I need (eg, I write ideas for blog posts and even lines of text – I am not a coherent writer / I can edit other people’s prose and did for over 40 years but ask me to write more than a short piece and I dissolve into a puddle).
5) Zip pouch with mirror, lip balm (my lips get chapped easily), a pen and a lipstick, the only makeup I walk around with. Otherwise (mascara, base, etc) I do stuff at home and it has to last.
6) Eye glass cleaning pad.
7) Mask and isopropyl alcohol spray (instead of commercial hand sanitiser). Yes, I’m still doing that – and sometimes I have this deep desire to spray other people.
8) Bits of miscellaneous necessaries.

In the picture it’s all so banal, mundane. I guess that is why in the Vogue segments they want people who carry round weird and mysterious things. Do you do that – carry around something really surprising?

I do not carry perfume samples with me. I know, sacrilege. Like makeup, that gets done at home and it’s meant to last. Sometimes – shock, horror – I go out commando, but this is usually because either I plan to sample that day or I have an appointment where perfume would make others twitchy.

I don’t have bag charms and don’t (yet) tie scarves around handles; I don’t generally carry a big water bottle; I don’t bring a book unless I’m looking at a significant train etc journey or expecting to sit and wait somewhere for a longer period (otherwise, I read on the phone or stare vaguely at whatever is happening around me – people are fascinating; people with dogs are more fascinating). One thing that is on the eventual to buy list is AirPods for listening to things – or just tuning out the guy in the café yacking to his mates about indescribable things.

Does any of this jibe with you, make you go ‘yes, that’s me’? What sort of bag do you use on a regular basis (handbag, backpack?), and what’s in it? Are you a bag collector, like with shoes or perfume or books? Do you just stuff things in your pockets and be done with it?

Pics: mine and Pexels