Give 2mins to look at the tote and we can write down thoughts
The amount of times a student has designed a tote and said ‘but I can’t make this, it is too simple’ I always say it’s about the details and what you are adding to the bag. Do not underestimate the tote!
So let’s discover a bit more about the tote.
The word tote means to bear or ‘to carry’ can be traced back to the 17th century but really made impact in the 1940s. In 1944 the Maine based outdoors store L.L.Bean introduced it’s ‘ice bag’ made from canvas which was as it’s title suggests, a bag made to carry ice and was popular because of it’s versitility and fnctionality.
Their famous Boat Bag was based on the icebag design and over the years they have changed the size, length of the handle, materials and finishes.
The tote bag is designed across all markets. Let us look at luxury brand Balenciaga’s designer version of the ikea bag in 2017 for £1600. When released Ikea quickly issued a response and took a light hearted swipe at the fashion industry with this ad. Demna Gvasalia the designer decided to channel this “perfect example of ready-made” into a leather luxury bag. Speaking to WWD, Gvasalia added that the Balenciaga bag’s price skyrocketed because of the change in logo and the fact that the tote was made “beautifully out of leather.” This obviously has been done before for example Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton
But it is not only humble totes that have been transformed into luxury items, luxury brands have designed their own versions of the tote, creating their own iconic bags. Let’s go back to Louis Vuitton and see their ‘Neverfull bag’ Even done collaborations with Yayoi Kusama and stephen sprouse to keep their iconic design current and targeting a range of different consumers
How can we ever forget Anya Hindmarch’s tote – I’m not a plastic bag which shot her brand and name to fame. Anya Hindmarch created the cloth bags for the organisation We Are What We Do to support its campaign against carrier bags. For the small price of £5.
Nowadays we have to pay for single use plastic bags – light weight, cheap, tote bags are on the rise to carry our shopping bag from the supermarket. Cotton bags with any print you can imagine on it.
So to conclude, looking at all these totes, each one we have seen today are different, have different customers, made from different materials, different closures, handles, sizes, constructions, piping, binding to name a few
So if you are designing a tote, don’t think it is simple or common. It’s so much more than that and I will now say again as I say to my students “Do not underestimate the tote!”
The above is what I prepared to chat about – I just used this as a prompt but had practiced my teaching session a few times to make sure I was within the 10minute time limit and knew what I was talking about. There was a session when I came back from maternity leave where I had to cover a session I knew very little about ‘Eurocentric’ and had no time to prepare – it was obvious I was reading from a sheet and I could see the students were a bit dubious of what I was talking about. I NEVER want to be in that situation again so if I need to, I will always prepare beforehand. The students can SMELL fear and will lose confidence in you quickly if you are not prepared! Thankfully this was the only situation like this I’ve been in and the students soon forgot how I conducted that class.
I really enjoyed this microteaching session and it is something I think I will expand on for my students in the future. Unfortunately or fortunately, the students have finished now for the year so it is a class I will prepare for over the summer for the next second year students.