My thing is bags. You can catch glimpses of a couple of these bags in these posts of mine, as well as peep the glamour shots of this one-off I asked a guy to build me earlier in the year to carry my rollerblades.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CoAaSicJcKo/
I didn’t own any nice bags until my late twenties and made do with a crummy faux army surplus knapsack and canvas gift shop tote until then. It was sort of a journey out of that darkness, where my first step taken toward Good Bags was with a hiking backpack I bought by Mountain Equipment Co-op (RIP), years after they’d switched to the square logo and outsourced their bag-making—so unbeknownst to me the daybag I had bought from them was not of the quality they used to be known for and was broken almost from the day I bought it. I picked up a Crumpler laptop messenger a little after, after wanting a Crumpler for so long but after that company had also gone downhill, and I had to send it in to be repaired within a few months. It sits in a corner of my spare room now and is where I keep my old laptops. After those two misfires I’d decided enough was enough!!
The first actually good bag I ever purchased for myself was the large Tom Bihn “Cafe” messenger bag in their halcyon fabric (aka gridstop, nylon ripstop with a grid of UHMWPE fibres)—black on the outside and wasabi green lined. It’s such an awesome combo and the only one I would buy from them because their usual colourways are not at all to my tastes.
Still going after seven years and one warrantied repair. This is the power of a well-made bag.
I also have a custom YNOT (another RIP) Gulper rolltop I use pretty much weekly and a sling pack that they made in collaboration with Muttonhead.
YNOT were a cottage bike bag outfit based out of Toronto that closed up shop this past October. Their TO location quickly sold out following the news, but they maintained a Japanese distributer who still has loads of stuff in stock. If you are in Japan and in the market for a high-quality bag or some adjacent accessory (and don’t mind the insane markup) I highly recommend checking out what’s left. I used to own an older version of the Magnetica and it was pretty rad.
I have a list of folders in my bookmarks of cottage bag companies I’m waiting on a reason to buy something from, like Inside Line Equipment in Berkeley or Blue Lug/Fairweather in Tokyo. I love hand-made technical fabric bags. The contrast between them and the disposable junk that frays and splits and falls apart as you look at it has definitely left its mark on my psyche.