In the lexicon of American fashion, there are a few icons: Blue jeans, polo shirts, baseball caps. I’d argue that the rugged canvas tote bag deserves a place on that list.
L.L. Bean’s founder first designed the bag 80 years ago as an ice carrier called the Boat and Tote. And while the tote has been a staple in American households for decades, over the past two years it’s exploded back into pop culture. As Gen Z seemed to discover the tote for the first time, the hashtag #BoatAndTote began trending on TikTok. Fans obsessed over its utility and even personalized the bags with ironic phrases like “not my problem” and “unhinged.” This led to a 30% spike in tote bag sales at L.L. Bean, and many of these sales were to new customers.
But the fixation with the Boat and Tote appears to have kick-started a wider obsession with tote bags from other brands. In March of this year, Trader Joe’s launched a mini canvas tote bag that looks identical to L.L. Bean’s. The $2.99 bag turned into an unexpected viral sensation, selling out within days and showing up on eBay for upwards of $100.
Now Land’s End, another classic American brand, wants in on the tote bag action. Today it launches a promotion where customers can bring in any canvas tote from any brand and receive two Land’s End Canvas Pocket Totes in sizes medium and large (worth $80 in total) for $1. It’s also an effort to introduce Land’s End totes to a wider audience, and show that its bags are more functional than those of competitors, which typically do not have pockets. “We’re a well-kept secret amongst our own loyal customers,” says Matt Trainor, Land’s End SVP of brand and creative. “We believe that if more consumers knew about our differentiator, more consumers would use it.”
The promotion is designed to cultivate the same kind of virality we’ve seen with other tote bags. But will consumers embrace yet another tote bag or is this trend on its way out?
Why are tote bags so popular right now?
The canvas tote bag was invented by Leon Leonwood Bean in 1944 at a time when most people didn’t have freezers. He designed the bag to allow people to carry ice from the store to their home icebox. But in the years that followed, it became clear that the bags had a much broader functionality. In 1965, L.L. Bean relaunched the bag as the “Boat and Tote,” a name that suggested lugging gear around when fishing or sailing.
Over the decades that followed, the canvas tote became associated with New Englanders toting sunscreen and towels to the beach, and Midwestern moms carrying orange slices and Capri-Sun to soccer games. So it’s curious that the bag has recently become a fashion accessory for twentysomethings.
Trainor, who has studied this trend closely, believes that it’s part of a broader transition toward cotton tote bags over the past decade as part of an effort to move away from single-use shopping bags. Carrying a reusable cotton tote bag has been a way to signal how eco-friendly you are. And as more brands have created tote bags emblazoned with their logos, it’s been a way for people to project other aspects of their identities. Carrying a tote from The New Yorker signals your highbrow reading habits; carrying a tote supporting a presidential candidate signals your political leanings.
Over the years, however, most of us have accumulated heaps of these bags, and some have turned out to be less durable than expected. Many cotton totes can’t handle a large grocery run or carrying a pile of books back from the library. So the heavy-duty canvas bag has emerged as a better alternative. Many TikTokers have made a point to show just how much stuff they can tote around in their Boat and Tote.
Yet Trainor believes that the canvas tote is also part of the broader quiet luxury trend. It’s an understated, relatively inexpensive product, but over the years it has been associated with affluence. It’s been a staple of the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard set for decades. It’s been carried by everyone from Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy to Reese Witherspoon. “It’s a piece of culture,” Trainor says. “But it doesn’t have a luxury price point, so anyone can get their hands on it.”
The canvas bag wars
Land’s End has observed the canvas tote bag surge in popularity over the past two years. And now it wants to highlight its own collection of tote bags, which it has carried almost since the brand was founded in Chicago in 1963. Land’s End launched by selling sailing equipment, and early on it began to develop canvas bags that would be useful on boats. It offers a line of tote bags that are very similar to L.L. Bean’s. According to Trainor, the bags are a consistent source of revenue, particularly with the brand’s loyal base of customers, many of whom are Midwestern.
But Land’s End totes stand out because they are outfitted with a range of pockets, both on the inside and the outside. This is part of the brand’s broader approach to problem-solving design, Trainor says, noting that Land’s End’s top-selling category is swimwear, which is designed to offer sun protection and different levels of compression. “We brought similar design thinking to our totes,” he says. “The pockets are meant to help you stay organized, but we haven’t done a lot of brand marketing to position ourselves next to our competitors.”
The new trade-in program is designed to get the word out and highlight the functionality of the totes. And it’s likely to be very popular. Land’s End is offering two full-size tote bags, valued at around $80, for $1. The brand has set aside an unspecified number of totes for this trade-in, and it will continue the promotion until its inventory sells out.
The promotion is designed to generate the kind of excitement that has bubbled up around competitors’ tote bags. But the bigger question is whether Land’s End totes can achieve the same kind of iconic status as L.L. Bean’s. Trainor is counting on it, and hopes that great, problem-solving design will win out over trendiness. Ultimately, he believes, this could be a good opportunity to acquire a new generation of customers who are unfamiliar with Land’s End. “We want to grab some customers and bring them to a broader range of our product offerings,” he says. “My hope is that we can introduce new customers to the idea that we offer innovations that make life a bit easier.”