Packing your tote for the perfect summer day

Brilliant sunshine, sweltering traffic, tumultuous thunderstorms, Wimbledon and sunburn … the ‘average’ British summer is never boring! But it is unpredictable, and with so many of us heading off to festivals, hitting the beach, queueing at ports and airports or just chilling in the garden, we thought it was a great opportunity to give you our top tips on how to be a super summer tote owner. 

Tote management for picnics and beach parties

A tote bag is the natural accessory for al fresco events like picnics and sunbathing trips but how often do you end up rummaging around in the bottom for your sunscreen or shades and end up frustrated by the higgledy-piggledy nature of your bag?

Never fear, Blue Button Bags has the solution. The Toni Summer Breeze tote organisers make it simple to pack your bag and find every little thing without a moment’s hesitation. A tote bag organiser creates compartments into which you slot your precious items so you can instantly identify what you’re looking for.

Now, let’s be clear, we’re not talking about packing for your holiday - although if that’s your problem, there’s a great guide here. We’re dedicating this week’s blog to the perfect tote bag contents for a day out in the British summer.

What to pack in your summer bag

To be cool when all about you are hot under the collar, you should carry:

• A cologne stick - ideal for freshening up in an instant

• A small electric fan or even a folding fan (very elegant!)

• Sunscreen

• Handbag sized first aid kit

• Towel - ideally one of those compressed capsule towels that take up no more space than a pot of lip balm

• Oh yes, lip balm - with sunscreen of course!

• Water bottle

• Sun hat, or bandana, or lightweight scarf

• Sunglasses

• Mobile phone 

• Pen and small notepad for shopping lists, playing hangman etc.

• Your travel purse - which should contain small change, folding money, your plastic driving licence and a single debit card … not your regular purse which has everything else in too.  If you lose your travel purse it’s not a huge deal. Also it takes up much less room than your usual purse. 

• Healthy snacks - it’s great to have an ice cream or fruit smoothie but a healthy snack in your bag will stop you eating too much junk food on your day in the sun

• Wet wipes and tissues

• Headphones or earbuds 

• Beach shoes - whether you’re a flip-flop wearer or insist on something more elegant, shoes you can wear while you paddle in the ocean (or a fountain!) are essential

• Lightweight waterproof jacket.

Summer outing with children - tote bag tips

If you have children you might want to add:

• A fold up cabana or pop up umbrella to protect them from the sun

• A blow up beachball and a couple of other small toys in a mesh bag - that way you can put the toys in the bag and shake them free of sand or grass or water before stashing them away again. 

Finally, our top tip is to ensure you pack one perfect little treat - a fresh peach or single chocolate, a tiny tube of luxurious hand cream, a miniature book of poetry, a favourite podcast on your phone … then whatever happens you can have a moment of pure delight during your day.

By Kay Sexton

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Handbag encyclopaedia A - C

There are quite a few ways to list and categorise handbags. Looking at our own wardrobes, some of us do it by colour, some by favourite style, some of us line our bags up to match the shoes we wear them with. Then you can define handbags by brand, by age, by style … to be honest, whatever way you do it, we know that having more knowledge about the designer, the manufacture and the history of your handbag will bring greater enjoyment. It may also help you to learn how to care for your bag, so that your fave bags remain looking good for longer. 

We’re going to look at handbags alphabetically because we love the idea of bringing some of the less well known handbag facts to our Blue Button Bags blog readers!

Acorn bags

Aficionados know that Acorn bags are a very special brand - from the US, they hand-craft beautiful bags that fit to bicycles. Yes, bicycles! While it may not be familiar to many of Blue Button’s readership, this tiny organisation has won a following of bike riders that use Acorn bags and won’t have anything else. If you have a bicycle rider in your life, then browsing the online Acorn store might produce the perfect gift for them.

Backpack 

The favourite bag of children everywhere, backpacks have overtaken satchels as the bag of choice for school. While they’re great for your spine because they help keep your posture good, they are also renowned for creasing clothes and they don’t look great with a stylish outfit.

Bucket bag

A favourite of the catwalk, this bag is hotly tipped to be a 2015 favourite - The Guardian even has a bucket bag rundown! Bucket bags are popular but not always practical; drawstring type tops are slightly more secure but only marginally so. The real difficulty with bucket bags is twofold, they are a pickpocket’s delight because they are so easy to dip into, and conversely, they often frustrate busy women because you have to rummage around inside them to find what you want. They are good-looking handbags though, and work very well for women who don’t have to carry too many small items around.

Clutch bag

The clutch is a perennial - it is the bag of choice for weddings and evening events, partly because it has a traditional association with luxury and high status. Because it has to be held in the hand, carrying a clutch suggests that the owner is rich enough not to need to do anything for herself, like open doors, drive cars (or carriages as it would have been originally), remove coats, pay for anything … whilst this idea is unconscious, it’s no accident that the clutch bag remains an essential part of glitzy events where appearing to be rich or famous - or both - is part of the fun! An envelope is a sub-category of the clutch; shaped like a clutch bag but with a flap that folds down over the front of the bag - the name says it all, really. Similarly a fold-over clutch has a handle that can be folded down, often to change the bag back into a clutch from being a bag that can be hung off the wrist. 

By Kay Sexton

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Handbag trends in the UK

Research and Markets has added a new profile to its research surveys - handbags!  Okay, it might not  be the most exciting news in the world to you, but as a handbag designer, I found it fascinating. Looking at their findings in detail was really interesting too. 

First fact - tote bags are the largest of the four sectors in ‘handbag’ retailing - making up 30.77% of the market all on their own. 

The other three bag categories are:

Shoulder bags

Purses and Wallets

Satchels and Saddles.

What’s more interesting is what’s not there - no clutches and no classic ‘hand’ bags like the Kelly which, at least in the version popularised by Grace Kelly herself, didn’t have a shoulder strap. Bag fashions definitely change, and I wonder whether we’ll ever see a return to bags carried on the wrist, but probably not, women have too much to carry now, including tablets, and hanging that weight off your arm would soon get uncomfortable. 

E-commerce and designer bags

And the good news for us at Blue Button Bags is that the handbag market, in the UK at least, is buoyant with growth being driven by a recovering economy and a growing recognition of the value of a well designed bag that will become a classic item. E-commerce is the biggest area of growth with niche designer bags finding their place in the market as well as a strong interest in vintage handbags and shoulder bags with personalised details such as embellishments and modifications.

However, there is a little cloud on the horizon. The handbag market in the UK might struggle in future as the population ages and declines - I assume that this is because smart women will buy well designed bags that last and last, so they won’t need to keep buying more bags! 

The most famous handbags in the UK

Second fact. The report goes on to talk about the key vendors, who are very much the bag designers you’d expect to be on the list: Burberry, Chanel, Gucci, Hermes etc but also a couple of relatively new kids on the block such as Michael Kors and Radley. 

What’s common to the new designers is how eminently practical their bags are - Michael Kors with a background in sportswear, has become THE designer tote of the decade, and that’s no surprise, given how well his bags hold up to rough treatment, while Radley’s iconic Scotty Dog logo represents a fun, fashionable brand line that is designed to work as hard as the women who buy its bags. 

So I’m quietly thrilled to be in the vanguard of fashion in the UK handbag industry, and I always wonder to myself whether any of the bags that appear on the arms of celebrities in the media are quietly hiding a Blue Button Bag organiser inside!


By Kay Sexton


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Handbag museums

Who doesn’t like to travel? And who doesn’t like a chance to browse handbags?  Well, probably quite a few people, but if you, like me, are a fan of both travel and bags, you're bound to find something to thrill you in today’s blog post. There are actually three handbag museums in the world, and we’ve put together a short guide to them all.

So starting with those purses, which is what our American friends call handbags, and which often causes confusion in the world of handbag fans, the ESSE Purse Museum in Little Rock Arizona is a tiny but perfectly formed venture. One of their permanent exhibitions, showing 20th century American women through the bags they carried, is an amazing photo-history of a nation and a century, as well as being a wonderful tour of bags through a hundred years. It is a small museum, so give yourself a couple of hours, then another half hour for the very well-stocked gift shop, and remember they aren’t open on Mondays. Entry fee $10 and no coffee shop but there are plenty of nice places to eat nearby. One of the nice things about the ESSE Purse Museum is you can photograph yourself with your bag and send the picture to them to add to their archive which makes us into a party of the living history of handbags. 

Simone Handbag Museum

The first thing to say about the Simone Handbag Museum on Garosugil in Gangnam, Korea, is that it’s shaped like a handbag! Founded by Kenny Park, a Korean supplier of handbags for designer labels it features, somewhat 

surprisingly, only European handbags.  Displays include a history of bags from the 1820s to the modern day, and another room featuring the most modern examples of European design. It’s an amazing display, where each bag-carrying mannequin has been built by hand to give the best exposure to the bag itself. There’s a café, gift shop and bag shop, as well as an amazing area for customers to try making their own bags and a shop that sells unique leathers to customers who wish to have bags made. The curated exhibitions are of incredibly high quality, and the workshop areas are fun, so this is definitely one that needs most of a day to visit. Some of the information is in Korean only, but many of the staff speak great English and will help you decipher the detail that makes this museum so special. Simone Handbag Museum, 17 Dosan-Daero 13 Gil, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Korea

The pre-eminent world class museum for handbag enthusiasts is the Tassenmuseum Hendrikje in Amsterdam. It has more than 4000 items, dating back to the 16th century, and it all began back in the 1980s when Hendrikje Ivo bought a small tortoiseshell back that was dated back to 1820. It started a passion in her which her husband Heinz soon came to share - together they collected over 3000 bags before opening a museum in their own home in 1996. Since 2007 that museum has been moved to a townhouse in central Amsterdam and a thousand more bags have been added to the collection. A small entrance fee of around 10 Euros earns you a thorough grounding in the history of handbags. There’s a great tea rooms too, which, if you book in advance, allows you to have a special bag themed ‘fashion’ tea! Herengracht 573, 1017 CD Amsterdam, Netherlands

By Kay Sexton

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Four ways to style your little balck dress

We’ve all got a little black dress, and we all love to wear it, because classics become classics for a reason. The LBD is sophisticated yet simple, flattering yet unpretentious. There’s just one thing wrong … it can become boring! Not for anybody else, but for us, the wearer of the dress - sometimes we sigh when we look at our LBD and that’s the time to try a fresh new look without breaking the bank.

Bag your LBD

We love this idea - the right bag completely changes the look of a little black dress. For summer, try pairing your dress with a large raffia clutch and a broad brimmed straw hat. Rope heeled espadrilles complete this casual but elegant look. For a statement of style try court-heeled shoes, a patent leather shoulder bag and gloves - an air of almost regal elegance will result.

Waist not want not

A belt is the simplest and sometimes the most effective way to reprise your LBD. The options are endless: a wide cummerbund style belt with a string of pearls is effortlessly classic evening wear; a sash of tribal material or animal print, teamed with boots and a suede jacket gives you a striking outfit for a day’s shopping, while a gilt belt with metallic stilettos and a statement necklace will change your office little black dress into something seductive for cocktails after work.

Jacket juggle

Nothing alters the look of an LBD more than a jacket. A cream velvet or fun-fur cape around the shoulders creates an Audrey Hepburn look - svelte but not sexy. A black leather bomber jacket and killer heels is exactly the opposite - sophistication with a grown-up edginess. You can even throw a hoodie over your little black dress and pull on some Converse trainers … it really works!

Hermes scarf trick

Summer Breeze Tote Bag

Bride de Cour Canard, Hermes

Above all though, we love the Hermes scarf trick. From the moment we saw this on How to Wear a Hermes Scarf, we were on a quest to find the ideal Hermes scarf for each of our bags and while we won’t bore you with every permutation we came up with, we do think we have an outright winner. Summer Breeze is one of our best selling bags, and we think it is perfectly complemented by the  Bride de Cour Canard scarf in yellow. The clever way that tying the scarf to the neckline of the dress completely alters the appearance of this classic garment is nothing short of astonishing, and the way the scarf and bag enhance each other is lovely. Our LBD will never bore us again!

Blue Button Bags and Fashion Revolution - a responsible way to buy designer bags

Two years ago this month, the eight-storey Rana Plaza factory building near Dhaka collapsed. The building was full of garment shops, making clothes for companies around the world and 1,130 garment workers were killed, crushed under the rubble. More than 2,500 individuals, mainly women, were rescued, but suffered appalling injuries. 

It’s not exactly the subject material for a website selling bags is it? But the story is one that underpins everything we do at Blue Button Bags. We’re proud to be part of Fashion Revolution which aims to change the way we shop, wear and think about clothes and fashion.

Fashion Revolution asks you to share a photo of your garment label tagged with #whomadeyourclothes

Blue Button Bags designs and makes its stunning bags in the UK. This means that we pay more - more for fabric, more for manufacture, more for the welfare and wellbeing of those who cut and sew and finish our glamorous bags, accessories and scarves. And we think it’s worth it. Like Vivienne Westwood we say “Buy less, choose it well, make it last” not just because we want to sell you our lovely bags and accessories but because we believe that paying a good price for a well made, long lasting, high quality product is better for you, better for the planet and better for the people who make our exclusive Blue Button Bags line.

The big picture is really serious; the price of almost everything in the world rose rapidly in the past century - except for clothing. In 1900 the average American household spent 15% of income on clothing. By 2004 that figure had dropped to just 4%. As we pay less and less for clothing and accessories, we own more and more of them. An average British woman in 1997 purchased 19 items of clothing a year, by 2007 she was buying 34 items. More clothes purchased for less money means just one thing - at some point in the production chain, somebody is getting less money than they used to. In many cases this is the manufacturer, and that’s why garment workers are paid a pittance, work long hours and are forced to labour in poor conditions. 

Blue Button Bags - great bags at a great price

So we’re not the cheapest, but we think our bags are worth every penny because:

• We make classic items that look great season after season - they are an investment, not an indulgence
• Our bags and accessories are superb quality - made to last, they deliver on quality and performance
• The people who make Blue Button Bag items are well paid, so the products are well made, which means your experience of those products will be satisfying and fun.
• And it’s not just us saying this:

• Young mothers find our organisers are ‘must have’ items, allowing them to have a trouble-free day, with their little ones every day
• Make-up artists and hairdressers love the organiser inserts too - using them to support hectic careers and always look good in the spotlight
• Our tote bags are popular with holiday-makers and travellers in general - we’ve even seen one at a wedding, where the bride’s retro floral dress was perfectly complemented by Blue Button’s gorgeous tote.

So we’re glad to be a part of the Fashion Revolution and we’ll be tweeting on 24 April, so if you want to let us know where our bags, scarves and accessories are, and how you use them, we’d be delighted to hear from you

By Kay Sexton

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The Story Behind the Design: Yellow and White Roses

At Blue Button Bags it is extremely important to us that we use designs which have a meaning and that are a reflection of our own memories and ideas, and therefore it is also important to us to share this inspiration with our customers to provide them with a bit more insight into what we do and why we do it.  This week we’ve decided to share the inspiration behind the yellow and white roses which feature heavily as part of our original collection as well as give you some tips on the best looks to pair our outfits with.

Yellow and White Roses

We didn’t just choose yellow and white roses for their beauty, there is some meaning there too.  Those of you who are familiar with Hampshire will know that these are the Hampshire Roses which reflects the county where our founder Subhashini, is from.  Many Hampshire based businesses had expressed their desire to use the Hampshire rose as its logo, but were rejected because of copyright breaches.  Instead, companies have opted to create their own rose design and now we can see several variations of the same theme at work all over Hampshire, from the single red rose to the double red rose, and even the Tudor Rose, representing our county’s emblem.

As for the colours – yellow roses symbolise new beginnings, and any new business venture is a new beginning.  White on the other hand is fresh and pure, and is reflective of the gorgeous thatched cottages that Hampshire is known for, as well as of course being symbolic of a traditional English country garden.

It is important to us that our designs are meaningful and feature real-life inspiration.  We only make a limited number of items to keep them truly unique, giving you quality assurance and original items that will become a part of your signature style.

Styling Our Products

The Oasis Scarf

Our Oasis Scarf is versatile and lightweight, making it the perfect accessory to your outfit.  Whether worn to work over a crisp white blouse or worn as a cover up on the beach, you will find plenty of great uses for this luxurious scarf.

Oasis Kenshani Tote Bag

Our tote bags are capable of fitting a lot of things in them, making them great for a woman on the go.  Our dream Saturday outfit for running errands or lunch with the girls would feature a midi skirt in a nautical shade of either red, white or navy; a cool t-shirt or blouse and of course, the Oasis tote.  A great way to brighten up any outfit, the Oasis is a must-have for your wardrobe.

We welcome our customers to ask us questions about our products.  We love to share our thoughts and ideas with you and aim to provide as much information as we can about our products.  Keep an eye out for some great new products coming soon and take a look at our current collection available now by clicking here.

By Sian Pitman

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