The Victoria Girl's Secret: She She Bags

Where are you from? How tall are you? What is the colour of your favourite jacket? These are all questions that Shelagh asks her clients at She She Bags before she leads them to the right one. Shelagh is special. At She She, she doesn’t just run two stores, she connects a diverse community of women to each other in the pursuit of joy and adventure. Where are you going and how are you getting there?, she asked one girl. If you’re going to Europe, you’ll need a big one with a zipper - maybe this versatile navy Buddha Bag from San Francisco. Oh, you bike? Well then, it’s all about the strap.

She She Bags has a bag for everyone. Tall high school students from Vancouver peruse purses next to grandmothers from Grand Prairie. Downtown “professional girls” e-mail each other whenever new styles come in (the latest are Valentino-inspired handbags), and one bride-to-be bought three of the same clutches for her bridesmaids. Sheryl Haynes volunteers with the Compassionate Resource Warehouse of Victoria. She recently took her She She bag to Africa last year. After riding on a camel and battling dust storms it still looked brand new. Ugandan women need bags, Sheryl said, and on the spot, Shelagh donated her unsellable bags to the Sheryl’s charity.

Arguably more than regular clothing, bags follow distinctive style trends. When Shelagh first opened She She Bags, it was popular to have initials sewn onto one side. Today, medium-size bags with intricate designs are crowd-pleasing favourites. Interestingly, fashion trends come and go with time, while classic styles are dependent instead on geography. Messenger styles are always fashionable on the West Coast (we are forever practical creatures), and it doesn’t get too cold for vinyl here. In fact, because it rains frequently, vinyl is often preferred - it lasts longer in the rain. Smaller handbags are classic in Central and Eastern Canada and leather is much more popular. Leather lasts forever and can withstand very cold temperatures that would crack less resilient materials.

International styles are cheaper in Victoria than Europe, sometimes by nearly half (Shelagh would know, she studied at the Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London!). Still, She She bags run well below $150.00 for vinyl and up to $450.00 for leather styles.

She She Bags
616 View St.
250.388.0613
sheshebags@telus.net

Submitted February 10, 2010
by: Claire Atkin writes from Victoria, B.C