It’s Officially the Summer of the Hot Tote

The other day, while getting ready to drag my sluggish carcass off to my day job, I was caught completely off-guard when Spotify shuffled my playlist – rather suddenly, might I add – to the baritone of KT Tunstall’s Suddenly I See – a quintessentially Y2K coming-of-age classic with quite the fascinating backstory.

For the uninitiated, there are the opening credits to The Devil Wears Prada.

In an instant – or I suppose, suddenly (okay, that’s the last time I make this joke) – I wasn’t a mere mortal anymore. Instead, I was one of those exotic young waifs working in pre-Recession print, dressing up for graceful workdays, swanning in and out of Sifth Avenue, and elegant evenings entertained on the Upper East Side. 

In other words, truly living the dream every aspiring adolescent in the aughties had once dreamt. Or to reiterate Ms. Tunstall, “Suddenly I see, this is what I wanna be.”

But as I packed my work tote – a sleek, stealth-wealth-on-a-budget AllSaints number I’d picked up for a discount – with my laptop, lunch pail, and a liter bottle of water (if not flat shoes for the subway, objectively not any better), any inkling of sleekness the bag might’ve had earlier had long dissipated. And with that, so had my fantasies.

Of course, I would never be one of those effortlessly exquisite specimens of the glamour glitterati; I was simply too weighed down by the weight of my worries crammed into that tote. And maybe there was some romanticism to that, too.

Yours Faithfully, the Tote Bag

Among the many paradoxes of fashion, the tote probably stands the tallest. 

You can obtain one for as low as practically nil since they often tend to run for free. Yet, you might still be willing to shell out thousands for a “high fashion” iteration. Then again, you can stuff that thousand-dollar number to absolute grossdom with your workplace appurtenances, or you can choose to channel your chic inner Jacob Elordi with a freebie from The Strand!

Clearly, when it comes to the tote, contradictions abound. Perhaps that has to do with the tote’s humble origins. While in theory, the tote has existed since time immemorial, its first formal demarcation came in 1944 courtesy of L. L. Bean of Maine, whose hulking haulers were called Bean’s Ice Carriers to quite literally “carry ice from car to ice chest.” True story.

Capable of carrying up to 500 pounds (of ice), the carryall was reintroduced into the popular lexicon as the Boat and Tote in 1965, when Coach’s Cashin Carry Tote was also gaining ground. Following their successes, the first Strand tote was launched in 1980, leading to an onslaught of tote bags at every price point, size, and specification imaginable, something we continue to grapple with to this day.

But despite its decades of history, the tote never entirely managed to shake off its utilitarian connotations – the ye old faithful of sacks, if you will.

2024: The Summer of the “Fashion” Tote?

Roughly 80 years into its existence, however, the tote – first the upstate New England equivalent of the icebox, then the perceived accessory of advertising academia hellscape – seems to be undergoing a metamorphosis of sorts.

Some of it is decidedly tongue-in-cheek – branded bodega wear was “in” at the height of the pandemic. The original L. L. Bean remains available for purchase, now with custom embroidery that reads “Psycho”, “Ambitchous” or even “Prada”. And the Trader Joe’s $2.99 canvas totes appear to be reselling for $3,000 in Japan. 

Others, however, lean more seriously into the purification of the basic trope, something perfected originally by the Olsen twins. Having started off with the aim of formulating the “perfect white t-shirt,” the sisters then turned towards perfecting the tote, The Row’s minimal Park, supersized Idaho, or TikTok-favorite Margaux, all testament to how the basic wardrobe necessity has now tapped into the zeitgeist.

Yet others have offered a whimsical take. Marc Jacobs’ The Tote Bag was made from scratch by Nara Smith, Beyoncé apparently prefers her Telfar over her Birkin(s), and former Depop-girlie Bella Hadid gave Coach’s Brooklyn Bag the ultimate urban cowgirl stamp of approval. In unrelated news, someone should work on that name.

Now, the tote’s trajectory, it seems, has only one way to go. And that’s up.

Function Over Fashion – At Long Last?

Of course, it all makes sense if you think about it.

After spending years – nay, decades – in the back pages of the lookbooks and at the rock-bottom of style, it was finally time for the tote’s time under the sun. And what better time for it than the summer, when the morning commute is equally likely to devolve into a jaunt to the beach, a trip to the Hamptons, or a dinner invitation? 

Eventually, the popularization of the tote involves a certain level of preparedness for anything and everything the day might throw at you. Plus, it makes financial sense for big bags to cost more – you get more bag (literally) for your buck!

But there’s also a degree of camp involved. 

Miu Miu’s frazzle-dazzle aesthetic, for instance, seems to take particular pride in the inherent messiness of a battered binky. Charli XCX’s brat summer, too, has been all about acknowledging the volatility of being a sane person in this insane world: “You’re just like that girl who is a little messy and likes to party and maybe says some dumb things sometimes, who feels herself but maybe also has a breakdown,”

So, perhaps simply owning up to the overflowing contents of your sad schlepper makes it just a little less miserable. Maybe even a little glamorous. Because you’d once dreamt about living this kind of life, laden with purpose precisely, with this kind of a bag, laden with the accouterments to that purposeful life. 

Because suddenly you see, this is exactly who you wanted to be.