When backpacks first started making a comeback, (around two-and-a-half years ago, if my memory serves me well) I was a little bit dubious. I'd spent the last few years of secondary school avoiding them like the plague, preferring instead to opt for over-sized doctor's bags that gave me the daily gift of upper-back pain.
Fast-forward to now and I am a firm convert. They are the perfect vessels for laptop-hauling, book-smuggling and water-bottle-transporting.
I even had a love-affair with my current backpack. At £90 (with student discount) from Topshop, it was out of my sensible spending range, even if my old bag was only held together with safety-pins and determination. It was also an impractical bright blue, hairy, spotted, tasselled, soft-leather and water-absorbing creation (admirers have dubbed him 'Sully', after the Monsters Inc. character.) But I adored it - love is a reaction not a choice. I bored friends with tales of its beauty and embarked on a pilgrimage to the Oxford Circus shop everyday for a week.
But one day, the backpack wasn't there. It was a special item for the flagship store, you see, not available for purchase online or elsewhere. After imploring a sales-assistant, the last one was brought from the stockroom. And, dear reader, I bought it. Even it meant eating Special-K for a two weeks to afford it. And for all it's impractical blueness, Sully's a staple for my wardrobe now.
So the moral of the fable is: a good backpack will be a loyal companion. Or something else that justifies impulsive, emotion-driven buying. Let's roll with that.
Here's my picks for this week. All of them characters: boring be damned.
Although the clean-cut whiteness of this bag raises its rating on the impracticality scale (unless you are one of these people who never spill anything), that's also its strength. It'll pretty much work well with anything. The design is simple but the Dalmatian print flap really makes it something to notice and envy. It's not at all surprising that ASOS is running low on these.
Look at this backpack - its sensible colour, sensible pockets, sensible size, sensible material. Oh so sensible. But it's tooled with this beautiful fern pattern - the perfect balance between statement and need, a great prop for convincing others you make amazing financial decisions.
Not only the pattern and dark suede combination perfectly on point, this backpack has a wonderful story to it. It's entirely made by tradesmen in Bolivia, so you're supporting a community as well. Beara Beara say they want 'to provide an antidote to the throwaway market of the high-street and aim to help create a sense of fun, style, individuality and belonging in people’s lives.' That's exactly it - you'll want a piece you can keep coming back to again and again.
Here's an uplifting song to lighten your load: Bobby McFerrin's Don't Worry Be Happy.
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