I’d like to have a word with the woman who bought her first basket bag in roughly 1996, convinced it was a one season joke she’d get a summer out of and then quietly retire. That woman had no idea she’d still be buying them thirty years later, still be arguing about them, and would eventually own more of the things than she owns proper handbags, which is a fact I only worked out recently and didn’t love working out.
The proper argument this year started with a basket bag someone brought to a July dinner that had a full leather flap and a gold clasp on it, dressed up like it was trying to get into somewhere nicer than the restaurant we were at. Half the table thought it was clever, a basket bag doing double duty as something you could carry to an actual event, not just to the farmers market looking pleased with yourself. The other half thought a basket bag with a gold clasp on it is like a lawn chair with a chandelier bolted to the arm, technically possible, deeply wrong, and nobody spoke to that person for the rest of the appetizer.
Here’s where I’ve landed, for whatever that’s worth after thirty years of this.
The one doing the actual work in my closet right now is small, undecorated, and carried on four days out of most weeks, which sounds like a lot until you remember I wear the same six outfits on rotation and this bag simply doesn’t argue with any of them. Linen pants, a plain white shirt, my one decent denim jacket, even a dress I’d otherwise call too dressed up for a Tuesday, it all sits fine next to a basket.
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That’s eleven, maybe twelve outfits by my count, and I stopped counting because it started feeling like bragging.
The one I won’t defend is the enormous one, the kind you could fit a toddler in, that I bought because it photographed beautifully on somebody twenty five years younger than me standing on a beach I have never been to and never will be. It looks ridiculous on me. It looked ridiculous the day I bought it, and I knew it in the store, and I bought it anyway, and it has been carried exactly twice, both times by my sister, who took it without asking and has never once thanked me for it.
My sister, incidentally, took one look at the gold clasp bag when I described it and said nothing, which from her is a full review. I’m inclined to agree with her, though I’ll admit I called it a nineties throwback within about four seconds, which might say more about me than about the bag. Either way, the plain one wins. It’ll still be winning in 2030.
