I'm Over Heavy Handbags This Summer—Here's the Trend I'm Carrying Instead

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(Image credit: @emilisindlev)

The beauty of summer is its inherently carefree nature. Plans are overrated, as it’s all about figuring out ways to enjoy the warm weather spontaneously. Cue the last-minute weekend beach trips and long, late nights aimlessly getting into everything and anything. That spirit is precisely why once May hits, I put all of my big, heavy bags on the back burner. Sure, they may be useful for schlepping around extras, but it's far from convenient once that after-work meetup turns into an impromptu night of bar hopping. But it's not just the ability to pack lightly that's won me over: I find myself walking so much more during the warm months, and a heavy shoulder full of junk gets old fast. 

In their place, I'm going for bags that are as lightweight and compact as possible. That includes swapping full-on leather bags with bulky buckles for raffia totes and crossbody mini bags that are a fraction of the weight. To check out all the cute and practical bags I currently have my eye on, keep scrolling.

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Next up: I've Done My Research—6 Interior Design Trends That Are Being Phased Out

Fashion Market Editor

Indya Brown is a fashion editor, stylist, and writer living in Los Angeles. While going to school at Columbia University in New York City, she got her feet wet in the fashion industry interning at Elle magazine, Harper's Bazaar, and New York magazine's The Cut. After graduating in 2016, she joined The Cut as a fashion assistant, eventually working her way up to fashion editor. There, she worked on a multitude of projects, including styling inbook feature stories for New York magazine's print issue, writing and pitching market stories for The Cut, and serving as fashion lead for The Cut's branded content. While New York has been her home for over 10 years, she moved to Los Angeles in the midst of the pandemic in 2020 for a new chapter. Now she is a fashion market editor for Who What Wear, focusing on emerging designers, rising trends on and off the internet, interior design, and BIPOC creatives and brands. Aside from her duties as a fashion market editor, Brown is also a freelance stylist and writer, working on national print and video commercial campaigns for Sephora, The Independent, and Cadillac. Her bylines also include Harper's Bazaar, Vox, and The New York Times. But once the computer goes down and the emails turn off, she's likely eating her way through Koreatown, hunting down vintage furniture, scoping out new outrageous nail designs to try, or taking a hot cycling class.