Everything in my wardrobe was chosen. My handbags were only ever replaced. This is a letter about the first one I chose
Six things this hand-stitched bag gets right that forty years of high street handbags never did, from a woman who had never once wondered what her bag was actually made of.
Margaret Townsend · Customer · Harrogate · 6 min read
I am 63, I keep a careful wardrobe, and I want to start with an admission. Everything in that wardrobe was chosen. The good coat was thought about for weeks. The boots were researched. Even the gloves had a shortlist. And the bag, which I carry every single day of my life, is a peeling black thing I grabbed in a department store sale in about 2021 and have never once liked. I never chose it. I settled for it, and it stayed, and I am not sure any woman in Britain has ever chosen a handbag. So this is not a review. It is a woman who chose one at last, saying why.
The bag I am writing about is called the Eva Shoulder Bag, from Mabel's Leather, a one-woman workshop in the Cotswolds that has been quietly stitching full-grain leather for women our age since 1998. I first saw one on the hall chair at my friend Jean's house, holding its shape with everything she owns inside it, and when the workshop later 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.
Mine, at the top of my own stairs now. I assumed Jean's was for show. It was full of shopping.
Here is what forty years of high street bags taught me. A cheap handbag lives in two states. Passable, which is the first year, when nobody has looked at it closely. Or peeling at the corners, the strap gone soft, because the coating has already started lifting off the fabric underneath. Somewhere along the way I accepted that the thing I carried daily would also be the thing I replaced soonest, and that was that.
I chose the coat, the boots and the gloves. The thing I actually carry every day I settled for in 2021.
This bag is the first one I have ever owned on purpose, and having filled it, carried it, cleaned it and set it down in every room for a month, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The morning it arrived. It came out of the bag standing and has not slumped since.
It holds its own shape, even when empty
The leather is thick enough to stand on its own, full or holding nothing at all. No slumping, no folding in on itself in the hall. Empty, it sits there looking deliberate, which is a word I have never before applied to a handbag.
Empty or full it keeps its shape. The old one went in the bin that week.
Ann B., RiponThe leather is the hide's top layer
Full-grain means the top layer of the hide, the part that was on the animal, with its own marks still in it. Most high street bags are the layer underneath, sanded flat and printed with a grain that was never there. One wears in. The other wears through.
The grain, close up. Those marks are the hide's own. Nothing about them is printed.
You can see the marks in it and they are the hide's own. Nothing stamped on.
Gillian F., WetherbyThe strap is stitched, not glued
Two rows of stitching straight through the leather at both ends of the strap, and no glue anywhere near it. It does not dig into your shoulder on the walk back from the shops, which anyone who has carried a full bag up a hill will understand.
Carried it full of shopping up the hill and the stitching did not move at all.
Susan H., OtleyIt looks better the more you use it
The colour deepens where your hand goes, around the clasp and along the strap, and the small scuffs settle into the leather rather than sitting on top of it. Nice things usually need looking after. This one does not.
Four weeks in and it looks better than the day it came. Darker at the handle.
Brenda W., KnaresboroughThe clasp shuts with one hand, every time
A hidden magnet under the flap that shuts with one hand and a small click, with no buckle to thread and no zip to fight. Standing at the bus stop with gloves on, that matters more than it sounds. The old zip gave up in year one.
One hand, every time, even with a coffee in the other. Small thing, noticed daily.
Kathleen D., SkiptonTwenty-four bags, every one named
There are twenty-four of them on her shelves, every one with a woman's name, from the little Ella belt bag at £29.95 to the Valentine tote that looks like it should be behind glass. And because she is clearing the workshop before the move, any bag you buy comes with a second one free. There is a dark brown Marianne I have been circling for Sundays, which is how these things start, apparently.
Mine, and the second one. Two bags, one price, and my sister none the wiser until Sunday.
Took the Eva and chose the Evelyn free for my sister. Two bags, one price paid.
Norma J., ThirskThis bag, against the one I settled for
Nobody really chooses a handbag on purpose. That is the problem. One replaces another, then another, for decades. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Coated fabric that peels at the corners
Replaced every other year, without fail
Goes soft and folds in on itself
A printed grain that was never there
Never chosen, never liked, never kept
Stitched leather that darkens where you hold it
Kept for years, and handed on
Holds its shape, full or empty
The hide's own grain and its own marks
Chosen on purpose, at last
About the price
The Evelyn is £29.95 at the moment, down from £74.95. My Eva is £34.95 from £87.95, and the Valentine, the big structured tote, is £109.95 from £274.95.
I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, so I will pass on what the workshop told me, which is that she is moving to a bigger space after twenty-eight years and every bag she takes with her costs money to move. Her words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that at that price, with a second bag on top, the deliberation did not last long, and that Jean has since taken the Juliette.
I do not take guarantees at face value, so I read hers before I ordered. Twenty-eight years of stitching, she says, and fewer than a handful have ever come back to her. If one of yours does she puts it right, with no questions asked and no time limit on it. That sounded like a woman who knows what she sews, so I read on.
On its way out. Forty years of replacing bags, and this is the one I stopped replacing.
If you have also spent forty years replacing a bag you never chose, this is the one I would put in your hands myself, while the one you want is still on the shelf.
Margaret
THE EVA | FULL-GRAIN SHOULDER BAG
- ✓Holds its own shape, full or empty
- ✓Full-grain hide, never sanded and printed
- ✓Strap stitched straight through, no glue
- ✓Darkens and improves the more you carry it
- ✓Hidden magnetic clasp, shuts with one hand
- ✓24 bags in the collection, from £29.95
- ✓FREE UK delivery & lifetime craftsmanship guarantee
Clearing the workshop before the move. The best bags go first.