The rise of bags for men: It’s about time (and five of the best to try)

Pedro Almodóvar at San Sebastian International Film Festival on Sept 19 2025 - JB Lacroix

Few people find airports relaxing, but while most travellers’ biggest concern is missing their flight or losing their luggage, for Louisa, 48, it’s airport security that tends to make her heart beat faster. Louisa isn’t a drug-smuggler, but she is in possession of a boyfriend who decants so much from his pockets – passport, keys, phone, wallet, sunglasses, an inexplicable amount of loose change for someone living in a cashless society – she fears he’ll forget to retrieve some crucial item, and their trip will be ruined.

There’s a solution for this – it’s called a bag – but Louisa’s boyfriend is loath to use one. “He thinks they’re ‘girly’,” she says. “He did once have a backpack, but it fell apart. Since then, he’s basically been like the Queen, asking me to carry his stuff in my own bag rather than buying another.”

In these permissive, open-minded times, you’d think, or at least hope, there wouldn’t be anything to stop a heterosexual man carrying a bag that dared to veer beyond the rugged parameters of a rucksack, or the snatched-from-the-door-hook neutrality of a cloth tote. Yet the handbag has never caught on with men, presumably because its moniker is too female-coded, even though there’s nothing remotely feminine about the name itself. Which is why men’s bags have been rebranded as “manbags”, a ridiculous term, given no person of any gender has ever searched online for a “womanbag”.

Timothée Chalamet is a fan of the ‘manbag’ - Bauer-Griffin

Despite this virile rebranding, many men are still reluctant to use one. Posting on Reddit recently, one male user asked why “male youths of today all carry little handbags”. The replies weren’t kind. “In my day we had bullies to stop this sort of nonsense,” said one. “They are signalling to each other that they are available,” opined another.

For those men still stuck in Neanderthal times, it’s fair to say that the sight of actor Timothée Chalamet toting a Celine or Chanel quilt is unlikely to persuade them to embrace a bag, “man” or otherwise, any time soon. Nor is David Beckham blithely wearing a cross-body Goyard mini-trunk likely to change their mind, even if he is a footballer. But better news is afoot for those habitually charged with carrying their partner’s bits and bobs. The latest male to sport a manbag isn’t a 29 year-old It Boy or a sportsman famed for wearing a sarong, but Pedro Almodóvar, the redoubtable 76-year-old Spanish film director.

David Beckham wearing a cross-body Goyard mini-trunk in Paris - Marc Piasecki

Appearing at the San Sebastian International Film Festival earlier this week, Almodóvar was spotted toting a £2,950 “Puzzle” bag, by Loewe. The brainchild of Jonathan Anderson (now creative director at Dior) and constructed to look like a jigsaw, it remains one of Anderson’s biggest hits. But it’s Almodóvar’s insouciance that makes it so compelling. In wearing such a high-fashion item with white sneakers, a gingham shirt and slightly crumpled navy chinos, he looks like any other bloke on the street, making the bag look far less threatening than if he were dressed up to the nines.

Almodóvar is one of an increasing number of men intent on using a more stylish receptacle than a pocket to carry their stuff. Mulberry reports a 107 per cent increase in Google searches for its men’s bags, with a 56 per cent rise in sales of its nylon men’s products, and a 53 per cent rise in its cross-body “Anthony” bag.

Jacob Elordi at a Bottega Veneta fashion show - Getty

As someone whose job involves attending the international menswear shows, Davis is surrounded by men toting designer bags, yet he’s still reluctant to follow suit. “At university, the plastic carrier bag was the way to cart about your pens and lecture notes, possibly from a low-rent high-street brand for extra irony points,” he remembers. “That then ‘upscaled’ to a DJ’s 12” nylon record bag, even though I couldn’t DJ. While I was fretting about what to wear to the shows earlier this year, my wife appeared from the bedroom clutching a tiny black leather cross-body YSL number. ‘It’s a clutch bag,’ I wailed. She suggested that I pack it, and while I’m as susceptible to trends as the next shallow person, I drew the line at rocking a ladies’ handbag. These days, I carry my laptop and charger in a tote bag, but a nice one from Kvadrat by Raf Simons. It’s emphatically not a ladies’ handbag.”

Whatever you call them, the time for men to stop stuffing things in their pockets, dropping things tucked under their arms and giving things to someone else to carry is long overdue. For those for whom a handbag is unconscionable, here’s a selection of receptacles that aren’t briefcases or backpacks, clutches or totes.

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