On Beginning

Every journal ought to begin by saying what it is for. This one is kept by a house of handbags, and it will concern itself with the things such a house thinks about once the shop is shut: how a strap falls from the shoulder, why a clasp should sound certain when it closes, what becomes of a bag after ten years of being carried. You have found us early. Come in.

I. Of the Name

Luna is the Latin word for the moon, which keeps its own hours and has never once raised its voice. Freya, in the old Norse tales, was a goddess with a great fondness for beautiful things and no embarrassment about it. We like the two of them side by side. Most of the people we admire are a little of each.

II. Of What a Bag Is For

A bag is the one thing you own that goes everywhere you go and repeats none of it. It holds the letter you meant to post, the keys to a house you have since left, the ticket from a good day that you could not quite throw away. You will change your coat, your city and very possibly your mind, and it will still be there on your arm, keeping your confidence.

So we think it should be chosen slowly, and made slowly before that. We begin with proportion, because a bag that is wrong by a finger's width will be wrong for as long as you own it. Then come the hardware, chosen for its weight in the hand, and the edges and seams, which are finished where the eye goes and strengthened where the strain does.

The right bag does more than finish an outfit. In time it becomes part of your story.

III. Of You

We hold no opinion on how you ought to dress. Be bold or delicate, keep to the classics, or change your whole mind by the week. Our job is the smaller one of making sure that whatever is on your arm looks as though you meant it, and that it still looks that way in ten years.

IV. Of What Comes Next

In these pages we will set down what we learn as we learn it: small histories of the shapes we borrow, starting with the satchel, which spent a long time carrying schoolbooks before anyone thought to carry it for pleasure; notes on colour, and why we keep ours few; and plain advice on looking after a bag through an Indian monsoon.

This is the first entry, and the ink has not dried. Thank you for reading it, and for being here this early. We are only beginning.