ON TOTE BAGS

The bag was designed in 1944 to carry ice. Not to the beach, not to a boat — from the car to the ice chest in the house. That was the whole brief.

The canvas came from conveyor belt material. The bottom was built in two layers. It was tested to hold five hundred pounds.

Nobody has improved on it since. No seasons, no updates, no reason. It was finished the first time.

It has no opinion about what you put in it. Ice, firewood, towels, a laptop, a baby's things. It carries whatever you give it and holds the same shape either way. That indifference is the dignity of it.

When I was little, my best friend's mother was Susan Felder. Big smile, bright eyes. She always looked like she was coming from the beach or heading back to it. She had a warm laugh, and even as a kid I could tell she knew how to live. I wanted to be that kind of mother.

The Felders kept a boat in the marina. Nothing extravagant. Summers it was moored in Catalina, and a week on that boat was the first freedom I ever had. We weren't old enough to drive, but we could take the Boston Whaler out and go find empty coves. Becca would run us in to the dock for a burger.

Before every trip, Susan lined the hall with those totes. By the time I got there they were already packed. Striped beach towels. The long necks of wine bottles. Corn chips. Games. Books and magazines.

I carried them from the Suburban down the dock to the deck. Every single time.

Those bags were summer. Not a symbol of summer — the thing itself. Wherever they were going, I wanted to be.

She used the same ones for years. I don't remember her ever replacing one.

It was never about fashion, just a container for whoever is carrying it. Susan's totes weren't beautiful. They were hers, and then they were mine to carry down the dock, and that turns out to be the whole of it.

xx lp

Lisa Popp is the founder and creative director of Stillwater, a small-batch women's apparel brand she started in Los Angeles in 2014. Everything is designed in her Los Angeles studio and made locally. Runs Deep is her journal.