Men and bags: it’s about time

My dear husband is always missing his keys, wallet, cell phone and digital camera.

To locate his missing phone, we would have to use my phone to miss-call his phone, which would ultimately end up in the car or certain parts of the house.

Sometimes I wish he would just use a bag, but save from his work bag, he simply refuses.

I saw a cool guy in Hong Kong wearing a little Louis Vuitton body bag and asked my husband if he would be interested to carry one: No.

So on certain occasions, he puts stuff in my bag which just gets heavier.

My sister has the same problem with her husband, so she likes to keep her bag smaller, more compact.

So he can’t put his stuff in it.

My husband is Dutch, but he’s practically a local, so why are most Filipino men afraid to carry bags?

Two basic things:

Unmasculine.

The stigma of looking like a commuter.

In more progressive countries, lots of men and real men carry a man-purse or murse. There is no stigma of looking like a commuter, simply because their public transportation is high-tech and works and everybody uses it.

I have a friend who is a commuter, yet he refuses to carry an umbrella even if it rains. Even he doesn’t want to look like a commuter. He’d rather get wet.

A Brief History

When I was a kid in the ’70s, men walked around with a clutch bag.

Jeans were really tight and the only thing you could put in your back pocket was a comb, remembered stylist Jude Mancuyas.

That was the time of Brylcreem and Tancho sticks. Then the Ace bag came along: a shoulder bag with a metal snap. The Japanese bags were cool, save for one major glitch: The leather was flaky and peeled off in time.

On a trip to Japan in1985, I remember seeing for the first time this amazing invention called the waist bag or belt bag. Now there’s a bag that to this day is hard to carry: There’s a very thin line between being chic and tacky.

In the early ’90s, everyone seemed to carry a backpack in New York.

I used to hang out there with a cute waiter from Time Café. After work, he would simply go to the club with a backpack and dance with it.

Then came the messenger bag, which my friends in Manila started to use. Suddenly everyone had one.

The body bag came out in the late ’90s, an era defined locally by cyberchic, raves, and the Warp boys.

We sold tons of it in my store, twice to Marc Nelson, because the first one broke.

These days, so many guys are just willing to stuff cargo pockets with, well, stuff. Or put their things in their girlfriends’ bags.

I say, don’t be afraid to use bags.

In this day and age of Jack Spade and Y’saacs, it’s very acceptable.

Just look at these cool guys I found.

I looked inside and guess what I saw?