Commuter & Dad Bag Test: Timbuk2

Timbuk2 Cross Classic Messenger ($150.00) & Cross Wiki ($60.00) / www.Timbuk2.com

If there is one company that’s the proverbial 800 pound gorilla of the messenger bag industry, it’s Timbuk2. The San Francisco based company’s three paneled bags have become somewhat iconic, just like its curly-cue logo. Though owners can customize those panels to almost any color combination, the bags are still instantly identifiable.

From its founding in 1989, Timbuk2’s goal was to create a bag rugged enough to serve the street pounding bicycle messengers of San Francisco yet stylish enough to appeal to a broader market.

Unlike other messenger bag companies, whose bags were co-opted by people looking to emulate bike messengers, the epitome of cool, Timbuk2’s designs were created with potential suburban commuters in mind. In 1994, the three panel design was perfected and customers were encouraged to customize their bag designs.

This gave birth to the particularly unique Timbuk2 style wave, now seen from San Francisco to New York, Memphis to Denver. Produced in different sizes and with various functionalities, their bags all share a common look and distinctive personality that can go city slick or biker artsy based on the owner’s preferences.

The Timbuk2 web site is a combination retail portal and street art venue. You can customize your bag right down to the color of the swirling logo. The site also has an interesting history of messenger bags.

Background

The company sent me two bags, a medium classic messenger bag and Wiki laptop sleeve. Both are in the new Cross fabric that is somewhat akin to a heavy duty hounds tooth. The wide woven pattern at first looks loose and potentially weak. In fact, it is a tight weave that is totally waterproof. The Cross fabric is part of a textile experiment that has the company designers re-imagining their products with more high-end materials and treatments.

The Results

Both bags are great in their own ways. The Cross fabric is different enough to be innovative, but practical enough for daily use. In terms of bags’ functionality, they are each well designed and do what you want them to do.

Cross Classic Messenger (M)

The Timbuk2 medium classic messenger bag is in many ways the perfect commuter messenger bag. It’s large enough to hold what you need but small enough not to turn into a sack of stuff. Unlike purpose built bags that were later put to use by office dwellers, Timbuk2 messenger bags were built with that very constituency in mind.

That translates to the unique pocket panel fitted into every Timbuk 2 messenger bag. There are slots for pens, a clear window of business cards, a cell phone sleeve and a variety of other pocket in varying sizes. There are also two zippered pockets – one large and one small – for securing your valuables and loose items.

Other options like a body stabilizing strap and shoulder strap pad come with this particular model. Small but meaningful features include bag buckles constructed from metal rather and plastic and a key tether located in an outer pocket instead of the normal in-bag location.

Cross Wiki

The Wiki is a laptop commuter sleeve with a carrying handle. Other than an outside pocket that can hold a few sheets of paper, that’s it. The thickly padded corduroy lining cradles and protects your machine and the limited features keep its purpose clear and simple.

I found this to be a great bag for moving around the laptop and keeping it simple. I am a convert to keeping my laptop in its own slim and trim bag. I may not get everything into one bag, but this is a sensible and handy alternative.

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An Englishman in New York: Cardboard Jeans

It’s not much fun wearing cardboard trousers. But it’s worth the pain.

This time last year I bought a pair of jeans from Jean Shop on West Broadway, New York. A friend had recommended the place to me, but to be honest I was largely taken in by the technical terms and stylish furnishing – piles of raw denim draped over rails around the shop, interspersed by various efforts in coloured leather: jackets, wallets etc.

As casual clothes are not my specialist subject, all the talk of Japanese denim, rinsing, raw wearing and dying oils went a little over my head. But the assistant claimed he wore one pair of these jeans every day of the year. That he had bought the pair he was wearing two years ago and never bought another. I think that might even have been the reason he decided to get a job there.

Most of the jeans sold are raw denim. This means that when you first wear them they will feel like cardboard – stiff, awkward and, well, crunchy. After a few days of wearing them in they will soften. After a few weeks they will feel comfortable and seem to fit really well. A year later they will be like a second skin.

The advantage of raw denim is that, unlike pretreated or prewashed jeans, the cotton adapts itself to your own particular shape and activities. It molds to you. This appeals to me as a fan of made-to-measure clothes generally – except that here the trousers adapt to you rather than being made for you.

An investment in a great pair of jeans also appeals to my thriftiness – one pair of classic, straight dark jeans can be worn with almost anything and won’t wear out for years. Jean Shop jeans aren’t that cheap – between $250 and $290. But then they’re not the most expensive either.

I’m wearing my pair today and have done half the time I’ve been in New York. Unlike some of my recommendations (I have yet to buy a suit from Suit Supply, as one reader pointed out. Though I am eager to hear anyone else’s experience) this one is fully tested. I went back to Jean Shop yesterday and it was just as cool – plus this time I knew a little more about the product, having done my own research. I bought exactly the same pair as mine (albeit an inch smaller on the waist) for my brother. I’m sure he’ll love them as much as me.

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An Englishman in New York

Why does anyone in New York buy ties fully priced? I’ve been here a good seven or eight times in my working life, but the discounts at Century 21 and to a lesser extent Filene’s Basement never cease to amaze me.

The ties are carefully arranged into price categories, from around $30 to $60. It compares to full prices of around $70 to $180. At one end Van Heusen and a few names I haven’t heard of; at the other Ferragamo, Louis Vuitton and Ralph Lauren Purple Label. All are reduced by somewhere between 60% and 80%.

It must harm your impression of a brand that its most luxurious items are being sold at a very heavy discount, all year round. Why would you then go to the Ralph Lauren block of stores uptown and not balk at paying near to 100 pounds for a tie?

This discounting does happen in the UK. But it is largely in out-of-town shopping centres like the York or Bicester designer outlets. Somehow it’s almost acceptable if the discount stores aren’t in the same city. Plus, they are all still separated by brand, surrounded by their usual furnishings, shop furniture and advertising.

This could serve to undermine the brand even further – as it is exactly the same kind of shop you would buy fully priced items from. But instead it seems to make the experience more special, unique. The racks and racks (sometimes piles) of closely stuffed clothes in Century 21, on the other hand, just seem to cheapen the whole experience, to lower Purple Label and Vuitton down to the level of the cheapest high-street store.

This level of discounting often happens with women’s clothing out of season – in the increasing number of designer vintage shops, for example, and online. But women care far more about how up to date their clothes are. Fashion and its fickle seasons mean one would never buy a trendy piece from two years ago – it would look like it was two years old, and you haven’t bought anything since.

Even men’s clothes could be seen as going in and out of season. Polo shirts and cardigans, bright colours and drainpipe jeans, all will probably find their way into discount stores after a while, unwanted and so pushed off by labels more interested in the new season, only concerned with cutting their losses on the old stock.

But men’s ties? Apart from a slight variation in width, how on earth do these go out of fashion? Besides, you can get super wide Purple Label ties and super narrow Black Label ties on the same rack – everything is covered. The same discounts apply to handkerchiefs, socks, underwear, cufflinks.

So I’m sure I’ll be buying a few. Less because I want them. More because it seems too good to be true – there’s nothing like this in London and I have a slight suspicion someone might realise what’s going on at any minute and close the place down.

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What are Stores for These Days?

A few weeks ago, I was patrolling some of New York’s best multibrand men’s stores reporting a story that has now appeared in the New York Sun. Actually, since the story was first assigned back in December, I was re-reporting – all of the winter clothes I had first seen have now, to the retailers’ relief, left the building.

New York should have more good ones than it does. I count a dozen, of which I chose half (the sixth, cut from my story, ended up on my blog), but all of this professional shopping raises the question: what are stores for?

The best stores are more than warehouses: they are embodiments of taste. Even if you have some yourself, they have more. From the Lilly-Pulitzer bright superluxe preppiness of Peter Elliot to the monochrome futuristic goth robes of Atelier, someone in charge has a vision of how you can live as a clothed person. Even the same lines, and the same pieces, can serve very different masters. A shawl collared cotton twill vest from Engineered Garments, for instance, comes in a black stripe to suit the dark palette of Hollander and Lexer in Brooklyn, where hangs with matching coat and pants that make up a “There Will Be Blood” era suit, while Odin in Soho sells it in a lighter plaid, and by itself as an accent piece.

The holy grail, or rather founding point, of these ‘sensibility’ stores is 10 Corso Como in Milan, Japan and now Seoul. Men.style.com’s Tim Blanks appreciates the flagship here.

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How Not to Relaunch a Product: Belstaff Jacket

Belstaff famously makes motorcycle jackets. The brand has been reinvigorated in the past few years. This is good for awareness, but not necessarily good for integrity.

Steve McQueen famously stayed home one night rather than go out with his movie-star girlfriend in order to wax his Belstaff. This is not a euphemism. He was such a fan of the motorcycle jacket, traditionally constructed from waxed cotton, that he wore the Trialmaster series throughout his life, including at the Enduro off-road motorbike race in Europe, where he represented the US.

I knew part of this from reading of McQueen’s passion for the jacket in a magazine. I was also aware of seeing people wearing the occasional beaten up Belstaff jacket, its Union Jack proudly displayed under a front pocket. But I hadn’t really been aware of where these jackets were bought or what was so good about them.

Advertising changed that. More money pumped into marketing meant adverts in all the usual magazines, an upgrade of the London store on Conduit Street and the accompanying editorial that employing a good PR agency gets you.

So last month, with a little money to spare and searching for inspiration, I visited the Conduit Street store. It was slick – minimalist white decoration, industrial-chic storage at the back, smiling employees. But it was empty, and the staff showed an alarming ignorance of their product.

The men’s department is downstairs, which seems odd, given that I have yet to see a woman wearing a Belstaff jacket and nearly all the advertising features men. I’m aware that brands often put the women’s section on the ground floor, as they tend to be less prepared to walk flights and tend to spend more. But here it’s odd given the clientele.

More disturbing were the sales staff. Looking at two jackets, the Redford and the Belford, I asked one (female) member of staff what the difference was between the two. All I could see was one extra pocket on the Redford, for £50 more. When I asked, she picked up the jacket and had a look at it. This is never a good sign. Then she told me, that, as far as she could work out, the difference was one extra pocket and £50.

This ignorance, the distinct lack of stock, the refusal to do any refunds and the fact that so much money had obviously been spent on marketing (which is warning to anyone looking to get value for money – oh, and they obviously paid Ewan McGregor to wear one while he rode around Africa, which is not money well spent) did not stop me buying one – the Belford.

It didn’t stop me because the quality of the jacket was fantastic. From the suede lining that almost made you want to wear nothing underneath, to the durable and high quality fastenings; from the instructions on how to look after it over decades, to the odd-school paisley sleeve lining; it was impossible to resist.

The product is faultless and will find a great audience, if only they learnt a little more about pitching this to the right market with the right people. This is an old-fashioned, high quality British product. It should be sold to older, slightly style-conscious men who will appreciate it. And it should be sold by people who know what they’re selling.

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