With the exception of self-described “psychic critic” – and author of the “Preemption Song” column – Jonathan Livingston Spacehelmet, we at TUMULT are not clairvoyant. But we wouldn’t be qualified to be doing this at all were we not especially sensitive to the minor subtle vibrations in the rail lines that connect our global culture.
Lately we’ve been sensing a growing impulse among men that involves abandoning the shoulder bag. This shift does not necessarily owe to the idea that men equate shoulder bags with ladies’ purses. Men got over that years ago. It has more to do with the reclamation of masculine images and objects like the traditional businessman’s attaché case.
The virtues of the boxy rectangular attaché case are many. They are, for example, extremely utilitarian. They hold several files, some pens, a laptop, a few of legal pads, a flash drive, a couple of pressed shirts, and your lunch. An attaché case, however, does not hold all of these things at once. Part of the allure of the attaché case is that it suggests, by its contents, that its carrier is capable of making important decisions. The act of packing a briefcase is one of stripping away excess under the guiding principle that it is difficult to be disorganized when you only have the shit that you actually need.
So much of what makes the attaché briefcase desirable in these times is not that which it lacks, but what it simply does not include. This is an important distinction, illustrated by the attaché’s inability to bisect a business suit with a thick nylon strap. This strapless-ness also eliminates indie rock pins and dangling noisemakers. The sides are made of leather – optimally a dark brown or a cordovan – which makes it especially difficult for designers to fuck it all up by adding a screenprinted flaming skull on the side. Nothing lacks a screenprinted flaming skull. We shouldn’t have to tell you that. It’s just that things that are good simply don’t have flaming skulls screenprinted onto them.
The early adopters – or really re-adopters – of the attaché in TUMULT’s editorial department cite chief among its attributes the way that that it naturally conveys the image of a person ready to conduct business in a business setting rather than that of a person you can count on to four-star “Green Grass and High Tides” during a particularly intense Rock Band session.
Jean-Baptiste Noir is Hungarian and double-jointed.
