This year’s It bag isn’t made by any of the usual designers. And if this bag could talk, it wouldn’t say “calf leather” so much as “wash me at 40C”. What’s more, in an ideal world, you would never want to buy another again.
The “forever tote” is big business. Usually made from calico, an unbleached cotton designed to be reused, it’s similar to the cotton bags you have balled up at the bottom of a drawer, except it’s sturdy, with a reinforced base and handles, sometimes a pocket, often coloured (Yves Klein blue seems especially popular), and always conspicuously branded with logos. Demand is high.
Most of the totes at the highbrow, independent publisher Fitzcarraldo Editions are sold out, so it recently updated its standard “literary status symbol” blue tote bag into something more durable that could carry more books, says Fitzcarraldo’s spokesperson, Joel Burton.
At the V&A, the biggest selling tote is made from upcycled textile waste from Ghana, which the museum describes as “art history, but fashion”. The V&A shop also has high hopes for its “reinforced Cartier tote”, a more affordable souvenir from the Cartier exhibition, which opens on 12 April.
Elsewhere, totes are selling like hot cakes at hip wine bars such as Joyau (“designed to definitely be more durable than an average tote,” says Joyau’s owner, Jack Lawrence) as well as at retailers like Lands’ End that has a tote with a bespoke monogram and colourful trims, which can carry more than 100kg of items. Naturally, prices reflect all the add-ons and these totes cost between £20 and £50.
Forever totes were born out of a cotton tote crisis. The average life cycle of a tote is “disarmingly short”, according to the sustainability expert and co-founder of Fashion Revolution Orsola de Castro.
“We were told once upon a time it was better to use a tote than a plastic bag, that you are doing something good for the planet. In reality, the effect on the planet is considerably worse than a plastic bag because so many end up landfill,” she says.
According to research, the global market for cotton totes will surpass $1.1bn (£900m) in 2025, up $500m from 2024. Yet the UN environment programme says the average cotton tote needs to be used between 50 and 150 times to offset its production. In reality, less than 10% of totes are used more than three times.
Demand for cotton totes blew up about 15 years ago, after the Environment Agency began assessing the environmental impact of plastic bags. At the forefront of the drive was the British designer Anya Hindmarch, who launched her “I am not a plastic bag” canvas tote in 2007. In 2008, UK supermarkets were handing out almost 10bn lightweight single–use carrier bags a year. “I realised I could make a difference by using fashion to promote that idea [of ridding the world of plastic bags],” said Hindmarch.
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Since then, totes have reached critical mass, according to campaigners such as De Castro, who says most lack the quality of Hindmarch’s. “The old cotton totes began with good intentions – but because they wear out, and wash badly, the majority end up in landfill,” she says.
De Castro, who repurposes her totes into cushion covers, agrees that cotton totes are becoming a fast fashion accessory, their promise of “coolness” a ruse to make consumers want to accumulate more while failing to do the thing they were designed to do. “For me, tote bags are the ultimate greenwash,” she says. “Most of them are totally useless as bags.”
These bags mark their owner as an environmentally minded consumer yet they have been caught in a sort of arms race of the consumerist kind for almost a decade. Are you an LRB reader or a Fence magazine fan? Do you buy your beans from Sunday Roast or The Factory? For businesses, it’s free marketing, an easy way to extract more profit from customers.
The sticking point of the forever tote is, of course, the price. Then again, says Joyau’s Lawrence, for £22 you get a bag made by workers in India who are paid properly that actually does the job. “You get three wine bottle holders, a laptop sleeve and two mobile phone pockets in ours … it’s basically a Swiss army knife.”
