Hermes Picotin Lock 22 CM Bag Handmade In Taurillon Clemence Leather Gold Hardware 93 Orange

Orange is the colour everyone recognises, and the Picotin wears it like a punctuation mark — round, cheerful, impossible to overlook in a cloakroom. I resisted this bag for two years on the theory that it was too loud, then borrowed one for a weekend and understood the appeal within an hour.

The measurements are the standard generous bucket: twenty-two centimetres wide, twenty-one tall, eighteen deep — the open shape swallowing a weekend’s worth of small things, a book, sunglasses, a scarf, and a paper bag of cherries in summer, without complaint. The base is wide enough to stand on its own — an orange lighthouse on a café table.

Gold hardware deepens the orange toward apricot at the edges, and the pebble grain of Clemence keeps the surface from ever looking lacquered. The leather softens quickly with use, so within a month or two the bag has already taken on the way you carry it — something I noticed most clearly with this colour, because every new fold is another facet the light can catch.

It is the bag I am happiest to see waiting on a chair when I come home. I recommend it to anyone who needs a reason to be in a better mood.

Honest: bright orange shows edge wear as slight darkening at the base corners, and it asks for discipline elsewhere in the outfit — navy, white, denim and grey, not much beyond. It has never once failed to lift my mood, which is more than most sensible purchases manage.