The weekend bag you need in your life, from someone who knows
I was heading home to Sussex for the weekend after work on Friday, and therefore to save time opted to bring my small hold-all bag with me so that I could dash to the station as the small hand clicked to 5pm. It was Friday, the end of a testing week – happy days – but as I tossed my bag into the corner of the office with the delicacy of an airport luggage handler I felt a pair of eyes burning into the back of my head. They felt familiar, too. The bag had to go.
Now, I work in a highly fashionable team – this should come as no surprise, given that The Gentleman’s Journal is a luxury lifestyle magazine with a finger on the pulse of trends and style. I am slowly infiltrating the ranks, one sartorial selection at a time, but in comparison to our Art Director, a hypothetical lead violinist in the London Philharmonic Orchestra, I am the moron stood at the back banging the triangle, out of tune. I am Anne Hathaway in the Devil Wears Prada.
Said Art Director was quick to call a spade a spade – in the most cutting way she knows. “That’s nice,” she pursed, gesturing towards my crumpled excuse for a case. I’m well accustomed to this after a year; it translates as: “remove that insult to industry from my eye-line please. Now.” To minimise ridiculing I did so with haste – like a puppy being sent to the kennel for peeing on the new carpet.
I retreated to my desk and within seconds emails were pouring into my inbox with the subject line ‘alternatives’. I love my job, I love my job, I love my job. But while I, a man who looks as if he’s walked into a car boot sale covered in double-sided tape and left wearing whatever sticks, am privy to such ‘helpful’ suggestions, I figured it’s only decent that I share her advice with our discerning audience. You see she does this ‘great’ thing where she makes a list for me and I, lucky lil’ me, get to select the final choice on what ‘I’ like. It’s a foolproof science. So, this is where I was led, towards the Cerenga Duffle Bag from Rubirosa – a bag that prompted Stephen Fry to fall head over heels for the brand, declaring it an “honour to own”.
I’ve always seen Rubirosa as a brand for the 21st-century gentleman; a combination of elegance and joie de vivre, inspired by the legendary playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, who lived fast and died relatively young. Their leather products are, for me, their stand out iterations. Hand crafted ?in Portugal with best quality cow leather from France, mainly from Bretagne, their bags are both timeless and stylish, which, when trying to get the approval of Meryl Streep, is a nifty concoction.
So I shut my eyes and clicked add to basket. Finally I screen-shot the bag, hit reply to sender and winged the Art Director proof of my new purchase, the next step in the new me.
“Great choice,” came the swift reply. “Now what are we going to do about that shirt?”
For more information, visit www.rubirosa.ch
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