Laura Craik on why we should embrace the return of the bumbag

Laura Craik on the return of the bumbag, smudged lips and slebs’ model children
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Laura Craik14 September 2017

Sometimes I wonder what basic mass-market item we’ll lose our s*** over next. Ikea carriers have been glorified by Balenciaga. Crocs have been luxed-up by Christopher Kane. Uggs have been made over by Jeremy Scott. Julien Macdonald has even designed a limited-edition burger box for McDonald’s. If every era gets the bag it deserves, then 2017 deserves the fanny pack. I’m using the American term because it’s so pleasingly Benny Hill. Fanny pack, fanny pack, fanny pack.

How do you wear yours? Like a Kentucky fried tourist lost in Leicester Square? Like a raver lost in 1993? Or maybe like Rihanna? All three are okay. Those who thought the

fanny pack’s popularity had peaked in spring should brace themselves — then belt themselves with one of autumn’s new temptations. At Gucci, they were inscribed with the legend ‘common sense is not that common’ by the artist Coco Capitán, and have already sold out on Net-A-Porter, as have Prada’s genteel velvet ones. I’m loving that Net-A-Porter is calling them ‘belt bags’. How polite.

This season, there is no such thing as a bum bumbag. They’re all equally fabulous. Nor do you have to channel Mr Motivator or The Rock. Although if you’re after a proper Nineties throwback, try Moschino’s gold-lettered one, a dead ringer for the ones my skint friends and I coveted back in the day.

Adwoa Aboah
Boudet/BFA/REX/Shutterstock

To look modern, make like Adwoa Aboah, who wears her black nylon Prada bumbag strapped over one shoulder, facing front. You could also wear it like a belt, maybe cinching in the waist of a trenchcoat, if you have a waist to cinch. I’m more likely to wear mine like A$AP Rocky, snuggled strategically over my gut as camouflage. A$AP’s Balenciaga bag is my fave. Think of all the Wotsits you could store inside.

Crisp hoarder or not, there has never been a better time to ditch the handbag/rucksack/other invitation to get robbed for the hands-free, zippered security of a fanny pack. The perfect London bag is here.

Smudge Ado

Models backstage ahead of the Preen by Thornton Bregazzi show
Getty Images

Cack-handed with the lippy? Never met a lip brush you couldn’t hate? Then here’s one autumn beauty trend you can definitely get behind. I’m calling it Snogger’s Lip, because it has that muzzy outline you’re left with after a good smooch. And before you go ‘WTF?’, be availed of the fact that the wondrous Pat McGrath created this very effect for the Prada show — it also surfaced at Topshop Unique and Preen (left). The next time you try to apply make-up in the back seat of an Uber, with a toddler clinging onto your leg, simply apply your lipstick with your finger — sans mirror if needs be — and fret not if you overshoot your lip line, coz that’s the point.

Model Son

In this week’s edition of Celebrity Model Offspring, we bring you Bruno Cowen, the 17-year-old son of Emma Balfour and cover star of 10 Men’s new autumn/winter issue (below). For those not up to speed on the subject of seminal Nineties fashion shoots, Balfour was a kind of Aussie version of Rosemary Ferguson, but less smiley — the sort of model the tabloids would urge to ‘cheer up’. God, I miss the days when models had characterful lips, not generic pillows. No offence to Kaia Gerber, Gene Gallagher, Iris Law and Romeo Beckham, but Bruno is my fave CMO so far.

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