A letter from a reader

At 62, I spent my own anniversary dinner with a handbag on my lap, because there was nowhere else for it to go.

You should picture me writing this at the kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold beside me, because that is exactly how slowly it has come. I am not a writer, and what another woman takes out to dinner has never been any of my business.

But three different women have asked me about this bag since that night, two of them at the same table, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Don, at a very nice restaurant, on our fortieth. I had taken the little clutch, because the everyday bag is the size of a suitcase and you cannot put that on a chair in a place like that. So the clutch went on my lap. Then under my elbow. Then back on my lap. Somewhere around the main course he put his glass down and said it.

You have not had both hands free since we sat down. On your own anniversary.

I laughed, and then I looked down at it sitting there on the napkin like a third guest, and he was right. Forty years of evenings out, and the choice had always been the same. Bring the big one and have it slumped on the floor by my foot all night, or bring the little one and hold it from the moment I leave the house to the moment I get back in the car.

I did not decide that going out meant choosing between a suitcase and holding something all night. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one evening at a time, until your husband is pointing it out over the lamb.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for something to take out, I understood how I had ended up with what I had.

The shops give you two choices. There are the evening bags, which are beautiful and have no strap at all, or a chain so fine it is really just a handle, and so they live in your hand. And there are the day bags with proper straps, which are all the size of a weekend away.

Beautiful or carryable. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a small bag she does not have to hold.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You pick up the clutch. You hold it all evening. And you assume that is simply what dressing up is.

What I had wrong

Here is the bit I got most wrong, and I suspect I am not alone.

I thought my problem was that I needed a nicer evening bag. Every few years I bought one, and every one of them was something else to hold.

It turns out it was never about how nice it was.

It is about whether it comes with a strap long enough to go across you. A small bag on a long strap is an evening bag that you never have to think about again, because it is on you, and it stays on you through the drinks and the sitting down and the standing up and the dancing if it comes to that. The moment there is a strap, small stops costing you both hands.

It took me until 62, and a very good dinner I spent half of holding something, to work that out.

The bag is called the Lena

It is from Perth Boutique, a small Australian boutique that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now. My friend Bev found them, which she reminds me of regularly.

The bag is called the Lena. A small tan saddle bag in a warm leather look, with a rounded flap that comes down over the front and a single buckle strap to fasten it, on a long thin crossbody strap. Mine is the tan. It is about the size of a paperback and it holds exactly what an evening needs.

The strap is the part that matters. It is long enough to go over your head and sit on the hip, so from the moment you leave the house the bag is simply on you and your hands belong to you again. The flap comes right down over the front and buckles, so nothing is going to tip out when you lean over to kiss somebody hello. And it is small enough that it never looks like you have brought your whole life out with you, which is the only thing a clutch was ever doing for you.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is just a small bag that somebody remembered to put a strap on.

What happened at the next dinner

The first proper outing was Carol’s birthday, at a place in Fremantle with tables that are rather too small.

Three women asked me about it before the mains. The one opposite started it, because she had a clutch on her own lap at the time and she said so.

The third was Lorraine, who I have known for twenty years and who has never once commented on anything I carry. She looked at it and asked whether it was an old one of my mother’s. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I ate with two hands. I did not put it down and then check it was still there four times. I did not move it when the plates came. It was across me the whole evening and I forgot about it entirely, which I had not realised I had been unable to do at every dinner for forty years until I did it.

And at the end of the night I stood up and walked out without gathering anything, because there was nothing on the chair to gather. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. The strap is what makes small possible. A clutch is not a small bag. It is a thing you hold. A small bag on a long strap is the only one of the two that actually gives you an evening.

Two. A flap is kinder than a zip when you are dressed up. One buckle, one movement, no fiddling with a tiny pull in bad light. And it is properly shut, which a clutch under your arm never is.

Three. It is not only for evenings. I have taken it to the shops twice because I could not be bothered with the big one, and nobody looked at me as though I had overdone it.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

The Lena is $56.99. It was $199.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch, because I have paid more than that for a clutch that I held for one evening and then put in a drawer for two years.

There is no catch that I have found. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no middleman taking a cut, and they have their spring and anniversary sale on at the moment, with free shipping Australia wide, and a little more off again if you take two or more.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and had a proper look before I ordered. Thirty-seven bags in the collection, starting at $46.99, and they put a bracelet in with every leather bag, which I was not expecting and which my sister now owns.

Then I ordered the black as well for December, which Don says was entirely predictable. He is not wrong.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the kitchen with the teapot between us and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have spent years choosing between a bag the size of a weekend away and something you have to hold all night, not because you like it but because that seemed to be all there was, then it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and look.

Not because a handbag will change your life. It will not. But there is something in sitting through a whole dinner with both hands free that I had quietly given up on, and I would rather you did not give up on it too.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment, and the free shipping goes with it. And it is the tan that goes first, which I found out because Bev had to wait a week for hers.

I have not had a handbag on my lap since.

Maggie