Hermes Picotin Lock 18 CM Bag Handmade In Taurillon Clemence Leather Silver Hardware 75 Blue Jean

Blue Jean is the color of your favorite pair of jeans after a hundred washes: soft, slightly faded, impossible to dislike. As a small bag it stops being casual and becomes a quiet kind of classic instead.

The little Picotin is eighteen centimetres square at the mouth with thirteen centimetres of height, and the soft unlined Clemence lets the mouth gape open so you can actually see what you are reaching for. Phone, keys, a slim cardholder, a lip balm and sunglasses in a cloth all fit; anything bigger has to stay home. The denim tone can take a trace of transfer from denim clothing itself, which is the one small irony of this color. The dye runs through the hide, so the inside of the mouth is the same soft blue, with no pale lining to crack or peel.

Silver hardware keeps the denim tone cool, the lock rides on its leather tab, and the handles stand up on their own when the bag is placed on a table, which makes it look tidy in a way small bags often do not. Nothing about the bag is precious, and that is its virtue.

A note on double denim: beside jeans of almost the same shade, this bag either makes a deliberate blue statement or disappears into one blue blur, depending entirely on the wash. I like it best against white denim, cream and olive, where it reads as denim that was chosen on purpose.