A letter from a reader

At 63, every bag I ever owned said absolutely nothing about me

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women what to wear.

But three different women asked me about a bag at the library book sale, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

Some background on me. I read three books a week. My to-be-read pile is legally furniture. My idea of a perfect afternoon involves a chair, a pot of tea, and something with a dragon or a detective in it. That is who I have been for sixty years.

And for forty of those years, I carried taupe rectangles that said none of it.

Sensible bags. Neutral bags. Bags chosen the way you choose a filing cabinet. If you had lined up every bag I ever owned and asked a stranger what kind of woman carried them, the honest answer would have been, no kind in particular.

How bags go beige

It happens the way everything happens. The bags made for women our age are designed on one principle, do not draw attention. Goes-with-everything taupe, matches-nothing navy, safe, sensible, invisible.

The bags with any personality in them all seem to live in the teenagers' section, built like toys, gone by autumn. So you carry the filing cabinet, year after year, and your rich inner life, the books, the tea, the whole imaginative world of you, stays entirely off the record.

Then I saw it, and laughed out loud

I was not even shopping for a bag. Sue sent me the link one evening with no message except three exclamation marks, because she knows me.

It is from Iris & Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now, and it is called the Freya. A big quilted tote with a green dragon asleep on a stack of books, two teacups steaming away beside him, stars stitched into a navy sky. I laughed out loud at my kitchen table, and then I went quiet, because I realized it was the first bag I had ever seen that looked like the inside of my own head.

And here is what I did not expect. It is a genuinely good bag. Properly quilted and soft, fully lined inside with real pockets, a secure zipper across the top, and generously sized, the big one swallows a full library haul with room for the tea I buy on the way home. When life happens to it, it goes in the washing machine and comes out new.

Whimsy on the outside, competence on the inside. I know several women built the same way.

What happened at the book sale

Its first outing was the Friends of the Library sale, which for me is the social event of the season.

Three different women asked me about it. One of them, a complete stranger, pointed at it and said, that is the most YOU bag I have ever seen on anybody, and she had known me for four minutes. That is the fastest anyone has ever read me correctly, and it was the bag that did it.

But the part I keep coming back to is smaller. Waiting in the checkout line, a woman about my age touched my elbow and asked, is that a dragon, and we spent ten minutes talking about the books we loved at eleven years old. Forty years of taupe bags never started a single conversation. This one starts them everywhere it goes.

My granddaughter has already made her position clear, which is that the bag is to be left to her in my will. We are in negotiations.

Three things I have learned since

One. Whimsy needs competence behind it. A charming bag that fails as a bag is a toy. This one has the lining, the pockets, the zipper and the room of a serious tote, which is exactly what lets you get away with the dragon.

Two. It finds your people. Readers recognize it instantly and talk to you. It is a library card you wear on your shoulder.

Three. Two sizes, same price. A generous one and an even bigger one. I have the bigger one, because my library does a bag sale, and I plan accordingly.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Freya is $33.95. It was $67.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because handcrafted quilted bags at craft fairs start at twice that and rarely come with a lining.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and they run a summer sale to move the season's stock.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. Not the suspiciously perfect five you see on some websites, which if I am honest made me trust it rather more. One woman had written, “I get stopped about it everywhere I go, and it holds more than any sensible bag I have ever owned. My grandkids fight over who gets to carry it.” That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sitting on the porch with an iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

Think about what you love most in the world, the thing you would talk about for an hour if anybody asked. Now look at your bag and ask whether a stranger could guess any of it. If the answer is no, you have been carrying the filing cabinet too, and you do not have to.

Not because a bag changes anything. It does not. But walking around as visibly, cheerfully yourself, at 63, turns out to be a small daily pleasure that costs $33.95.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and these go quicker than you would think. And once this stock is gone, it is gone.

Strangers know exactly who I am now. It only took a dragon.

Peggy