How To Find The Perfect Back-To-Work Bag

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With the summer holidays well and truly behind us, it’s time to head back to the office. You might already have your wardrobe sorted, but Tiffanie Darke has some ideas for your back-to-work bag.

The Country & Town House Responsible Buyers’ Guide

Back-To-Work: Bags For The Office

September is a tempting time to update your handbag. Nothing signals the start of la rentrée better than a seasonal piece of arm candy – but choose wisely, my friends. First, you need to choose between ethics and sustainability.

Is Vegan Better?

If you are of the school that animals shouldn’t die for our wardrobes, you need a vegan option. But beware: the vast majority of vegan leather is polyurethane backed, which means it is plastic. Only Mirum, a material produced by natural fibre welding, has succeeded in 100 percent biodegradability, and while it is in scale-up mode, it is in hot demand. You can find it in Stella McCartney’s Falabella and Frayme ranges. Chains are on trend this season, which means there’s lots to love for the Frayme mini square bucket bag.

Know Your Leather

However, if you believe that leather is a byproduct of the meat industry and so there is little point in making carbon intensive replacement materials, then you have more choice. But know your leather. The traceability of this material is notoriously poor – you are unlikely to distinguish between organic, grass fed, regenerative or industrially farmed leather (mostly because accessories brands are not keen on reminding you that the material is sourced from animals). Find the brands that do. Mulberry guarantees grass-fed leather, and the extremely capacious Mulberry x Eleventy Piccadilly is a bag for life if ever I saw one.

Or look to British Pasture Leather. Essentially a certification scheme, this small two-woman team sources cattle hide directly from regenerative farms in the UK. It has now teamed up with Billy Tannery to produce its first bag, The Fauna, and it is an example to the rest of the industry.

Billy Tannery is another brand to watch, sourcing leather from culled deer (the pest of the British countryside) and goats, which is tanned on a family farm in Leicestershire. In a story of perfect circularity, it also produces a range of accessories for the King, sourced from deer on the Royal Estates and sold in the Highgrove, Balmoral and Sandringham shops.

Finally, Been London is perhaps the most sustainable brand of all, with everything made entirely from waste offcuts in local British workshops. Excellently priced for the material quality and craftsmanship, each style is made with limited hardware and in a limited run. There are some on-trend black and tan classics, but at that price why not go for a lilac or electric blue? Time to celebrate la rentrée.