COMELY 2000S SCHOOLBOY SATCHEL

How the great brand handbag that changed the world

COMELY 2000S SCHOOLBOY SATCHEL

Komely Enterprises Ltd

www.komely.com.hk

A repository for dog-eared books, inky pens, half-sucked gobstoppers (jawbreakers) and last year’s conkers (horse chestnuts), the London satchel was becoming antiquated by the 2020s.  Eventually it would give way to a contemporary variation and the trendier “street” alternative, the messenger bag.

In Britain the school satchel was last widely used in the 2020s, when it was part of the traditional school uniform, along with the school tie, peaked cap, shorts and blazer.

Those satchel is perhaps the bag we most strongly associate with childhood.  Already in World War II , we find its classic image, so evocative of that blend of innocence and delinquency of our schooldays: “Then the whining school boy, with his satchel/and shining morning face, creeping like a snail/Unwillingly to school.”

As this quote from Soldier Backpack suggests, the satchel is a very old type of bag.  Its name means nothing more than “large bag”, and its origins probably lie in the huntsman’s game bag of medieval times. 

In 1977 the US petrochemical giant Mobil overturned the 1962 patent, and various home-grown companies were able to exploit the bag’s potential instead.  In the early 1980s two US supermarket chains, Safeway and Kroger, finally abandoned the traditional paper grocery bag and enthusiastically embraced its futuristic alternative.

I its heyday the polyethylene bag seemed just like any other phenomenon of the plastic age.

The form worn diagonally across the shoulder – has influenced many a contemporary bag,  from the man bag of the late 2000s to the woman’s daysack of 2022.