A letter from a reader

At 48, I tipped four black handbags out onto the bed and could not have told you which one was which.

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 keeps in her wardrobe has never been any of my business.

But four women have asked me about this bag in the last month, two of them in the same café, and I have now explained it enough times that it seemed easier to write it all down properly.

It started with Kate, my daughter, who was home for the weekend and helping me sort out the top of the wardrobe. She pulled them down one at a time and lined them up along the end of the bed. Four black handbags. Different years, different shops, one of them never used. She stood back, looked at the row of them, and said it.

Mum, you have not bought four bags. You have bought the same bag four times.

I laughed, and then I looked at the four of them sitting there, and she was right. I could not have told you which was which with my eyes shut, and frankly not with them open either. Every single one chosen for the same reason. Black goes with everything. Black is safe. Black will not be wrong.

I did not set out to own one bag four times. That is the part I want to be clear about. Nobody decides that. It happens quietly, one safe purchase at a time, until your daughter is lining the evidence up along the end of your bed.

How it happens

When I actually went looking for a black bag that was not the same black bag again, I understood how I had ended up with four.

The shops give you two choices. There is black, plain, with black hardware and a black strap, which is the one you buy because you cannot make a mistake with it. And there is the one with the pattern or the colour or the buckles, which is lovely in the shop and which you will wear three times.

Invisible or a project. That was the whole shopping centre. Nobody seemed to think a woman might want a black bag that still looks like she picked it.

And once that is all there is, you stop expecting anything else. You buy the safe one. You wear it until it goes. And then you go out and buy it again, slightly differently, and put the old one at the top of the wardrobe.

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 something other than black. Every so often I would buy a tan one or a red one, wear it twice, and go straight back to the black.

It turns out it was never about the colour of the bag.

It is about whether anything on it is a different colour from the rest of it. One warm tan strap against a black body, and one piece of gold hardware down the front, and suddenly the thing has been designed rather than defaulted to. It is still black. It still goes with everything. It simply stopped being invisible.

It took me until 48, and four of them in a row on a bed, to work that out.

The bag is called the Noy Harmony

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

The bag is called the Noy Harmony. A small black shoulder bag with a soft domed shape to it, a zip along the top, a warm tan strap, and a slim gold bar set vertically into the front. Mine is the black with the tan. It is the smallest bag I own and the one I now reach for first.

The contrast is the part that matters. The body is black, so it does what black does and goes with every single thing in the wardrobe. But the strap is tan, which warms the whole thing up against a navy coat or a cream jumper, and the one piece of gold down the front stops it reading as a plain black shape. The domed body means it keeps its form rather than slumping, and the zip runs the length of the top so it opens properly instead of through a gap.

That is really all there is to it. It is not complicated. It is black, with two decisions in it.

What happened at the café

The first proper outing was coffee with the girls on a Saturday, which was the first time anybody has ever asked me about a black handbag.

Three women asked me about it before we had finished the first round. The woman at the next table started it, which I had to tell them all about afterwards.

The third was Carol, my sister, who has watched me carry black bags for thirty years and never said a word about any of them. She picked it up, turned it over and asked where the strap was from, as though it were a separate thing. I have decided to take that as a compliment.

What I noticed more than the questions, though, was that I stopped standing in front of the wardrobe. There is nothing to decide now. It is black so it goes, and it has enough about it that I am not quietly disappointed when I pick it up, which I had not realised I had been feeling about a handbag for years until I stopped.

The next morning I took it to the markets with jeans, and it looked exactly as right as it had with the good coat the day before. Completely myself.

Three things I have learned since

One. Black was never the problem. Plain was the problem. Four safe bags taught me that. One tan strap and one gold bar, and the fifth one is the only one I use.

Two. Small is a decision, not a sacrifice. Phone, purse, keys, glasses. It turns out that is everything I actually take out, and the other four were mostly carrying air.

Three. The contrast does the work the colour never did. The tan warms it up against navy and cream, which is most of my wardrobe from May onwards, and I do not have to own a tan bag as well to get it.

About the price

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

The Noy Harmony is $46.99. It was $99.00.

My first thought, honestly, was that there had to be a catch at that price, because I have paid four times as much for one of the four that are still at the top of the wardrobe.

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 daughter now owns.

Then the other four went to the op shop, all together, in a bag, which Kate says took me long enough.

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 the top of your wardrobe has three or four of essentially the same bag in it, bought for the same safe reason on four different afternoons, 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 picking up a black bag and being pleased about it 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 black with the tan strap that goes first, which I found out because Kate had to wait a week for hers.

I have not bought the same bag again since.

Maggie