Hermes Picotin Lock 22 CM Bag Handmade In Taurillon Clemence Leather Gold Hardware U4 Vert Vertigo

Vert Vertigo is the green of new leaves on a rainy morning, bright without being cartoonish, and it is the color I suggest to anyone who has decided their wardrobe needs one living thing in it; the decision took me a single glance out of a window.

The softness of Clemence suits green unusually well; the grain reads like the skin of a fruit rather than the surface of a shoe, and the unlined body keeps the whole bag light. It carries a phone, a wallet, keys, sunglasses and a paperback, and the soft sides take the shape of whatever is inside rather than the other way around. In sunlight it is unmistakably green; in a dim hallway it goes quiet and almost neutral.

Gold hardware warms the green toward olive in some light and toward lime in others, which is a livelier effect than silver would give. The lock sits quietly on its tab; the handles are cut from the same hide and darken slightly along their bends over time. Set the bag on a table and it looks like a small, well-tended plant.

Green this saturated has opinions about its companions, and it is worth choosing them deliberately. It loves cream, white, denim, camel and navy; it merely tolerates red and purple. Start with those friendships and the bag will look quietly expensive for the rest of the season. Green, it turns out, is a far better neutral than most people expect, and this one proves the point.