A working office lady needs a medium to large sized bag. We do want to carry stylish, designer, fine leatehr bags and we are fully aware that the bag is a key, loud part of the total fashion coordination.

But, OMG these beautiful gold-knuckled, pocketed, calf grain bags are just so heavy! Put in a mini laptop, make-up pouch, physical document folder, pens, notebook, folding umbrella and maybe a stainless steel coffee tumbler and bam feels like I am schlepping barrels of water or sacks of rice just to get in and out of work.

So then, the only change we can make is to lighten the sack itself as much as possible, which I think only gives proper office ladies two options–faux leather or nylon.

In fact, if we are only looking at weight, nylon probably is the easy winner but holding a nylon bag–unless it says Prada somewhere–is a treachery to your chic and elegant office style and makes you guilty of sartorial offense.

So then, we consider faux leather. Faux leather is also durable, ec-friendly, but then I get lost again. Choosing faux leather carries with it the implicit meaning that what we really want is the real leather but can’t due to economic or weight reasons, which makes it seem like a compromise, a loss admitted. Not sure that we want to emanate this sense of defeat in our daily commute.

Then we consider cotton but that becomes way too casual and only forebodes disaster under unfriendly wet weather.

So, I am stuck…I observe what people carry on week day mornings and evenings in the underground trains.

Some patterns I found — slightly older ladies guessing between late 40s and above outright carry large nylon totes. Light, spacious, and gets the work done. Fresh grads who presumably do not have large amounts of money to spend on bags carry faux leather bags that suggest the big high brands. Then there is the late 20s, 30s and early 40s segment where I think there is the largest variety. There definitely is a certain population that carries the expensive, heavy beautiful designer bags. The LVs and Celines to work. They could be large, or they could be teeny tiny and there will always lurk a much cheaper sub-bag either in nylon or cotton that carries whatever did not fit into that teeny tiny leather satchel. Then, there are those women with backpacks who seem to make a statement that they value utility over elegance, and this also looks fashionable.

I vacillate between the options, depending on my mood. My answer for now is to get one of each type and carry the thing that fits my mood of the day. But this is a perpetual question and I have yet to find that perfect work bag.

Happy to hear suggestions, ideas.