As much as I try to be careful, I’m just a person who is hard on things. On clothes, shoes, home decor, handbags, whatever. I used my old iPhone with a cracked screen until chunks of glass started falling out, and I buy a new pair of headphones every 10 weeks like clockwork. I am a bull in the china shop of my life. When it comes to bags, I always try to buy things that won’t show wear quickly and will resist my apparent subconscious urges to destroy them, but that’s an inexact science.
Most of my bags have held up admirably to my abuse, but they all fall victim eventually. A worn corner here, a frayed seam there – the edges start to falter, and then I have to move on to something else. A few bags have been standouts: My Mansur Gavriel Bucket Bag has been stuffed into carry-ons, chewed on by rescue dogs during my volunteer gig and lugged all over the subway system with less visible wear than you’d expect for such smooth, pristine leather, and my Proenza Schouler PS1 has taken similar abuse. (Although for the latter, my luck may be improved by virtue of having a textile-over-leather seasonal version of the bag instead of a standard leather one, which are known to wear quickly.)
Louis Vuitton’s coated canvas and Epi leather bags are widely considered to be a gold standard of sorts when it comes to bags that can take a beating for years, but I don’t have any in my current rotation or on my must-buy list. That’s why we wanted to pose this question to you: Which bags stand out in your collection as being especially durable and wear-resistant? On the other hand, which bags don’t?
