Hermes Evelyne 16 CM Bag Handmade In Taurillon Clemence Leather Gold Hardware 89 Noir

Black leather is the hardest thing to buy, because every black is a slightly different black. Color 89 on Taurillon Clemence is the deep, inky kind, with no grey cast and no blue lean. Paired with gold hardware it reads warm, perhaps for the first time in a black bag I have owned; the metal gives all that darkness something to push against.

Clemence is the soft, pebbled taurillon, and you feel the difference the moment you lift it. The leather has give, and the body slumps gently against your hip rather than standing away from it. Sixteen centimeters tall and eighteen across, this is the size I use when the day calls for a wallet, my phone, a keyring and a lipstick, and nothing more.

There is a trade-off to that softness, and I would rather tell you now. A Clemence Evelyne does not keep a rigid silhouette; over months the top edge relaxes and the bag begins to look like a well-used pouch. Some of us love precisely that. Others expect the crispness of a display piece and end up disappointed.

I wear mine on a long strap, low on the hip, mostly with denim and white shirts, and the gold perforated H keeps it from being just another black bag. It is the one in my drawer that works with everything and offends nothing, and after two years that is still the highest praise I can give a bag.