L.L.Bean Boat and Tote

The Boat and Tote is an open-topped bag of heavy natural cotton canvas, square in outline and slightly wider than it is tall. A band of coloured canvas wraps the base and climbs a few inches up each side, and two handles of the same colour run in straight stripes down the front and back before looping over the top. The base is doubled, the seams are stitched twice, and a small woven label inside reads Boat and Tote.

Its story begins with ice. In 1944 L.L.Bean offered Bean's Ice Carrier, a canvas bag for lifting blocks of ice from the car to the ice chest. It lasted a single season. The company kept no record of why it was dropped, though wartime shortages have been suggested. The bag returned in 1965, taller and slimmer, in nautical red and blue, and under a new name that pointed it towards the shore rather than the icehouse. That second beginning is the date given here.

From then on it stayed. An undated L.L.Bean newspaper advertisement offers it in white duck in small and large sizes, beside a handbag version with a zippered pocket. It became the bag of New England summers and then of the city, carried by Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy among many others, and monogramming, often ironic, turned a plain carrier into a personal one. Worn examples from the 1970s and 1980s now sell for as much as $600.

The bag is still sewn in Maine, one at a time, according to L.L.Bean, which says each is tested to carry 500 pounds. It is now made in four sizes with two lengths of handle, a zip-top variant and many colours of trim. The medium open-top model, 12 by 13 by 6 inches in natural canvas with coloured handles, costs £43 from L.L.Bean's own international shop.