It's Gonna Carry That Weight

20+ pre-owned bags

Jul 11, 2025

Welcome to the seventeenth edition of Not I, an ongoing series appearing (almost) every Friday or Saturday in which I share a curation of the pre-owned items currently on my personal favorites list. It’s style experimentation, deep-dive thrifting, and instant fashion-universe-expansion all wrapped up into one browsable unit. Read more about the idea behind the series, and find all previous editions, here.

In one of his recent columns, my friend Louis Cheslaw went on a search for a single bag “that’s exactly right,” and asked some of the best-dressed out there to help him find it. The results were first-rate — Man-tle’s ‘Jebok Bag’, Lemaire’s ‘Belted Tote’, and literally everything Joel Wilson is doing — and so were the prices. Perhaps I’m petty. Perhaps it’s the Dutch Calvinist spirit. Perhaps I just don’t know what living the good life really means. But I’m hard-pressed to spend €500 on an item that will definitely take a beating. And by beating I don’t mean the “getting your off-white Unkruid ‘Gardening Trousers’ or your ecru MHL ‘Tool Pocket Trousers’ dirty from sitting on a park bench” kind of beating. I mean a beating of the serious, human kind — of leaking pens, of black coffee stains, and of your daughter’s non-removable glitter nail polish dripping everywhere.

Today’s list brings together 20+ very good, hard-wearing, and more or less affordable bags — canvas, leather and nylon; small and big; tote, shoulder, and crossbody; very practical and mostly beautiful; as good as new or vintage and worn-out; for work, weekend and beach…it’s all there!