The French Nylon Tote I Carried in High School Is Somehow Even Better Now

The year is 2003; it’s 7:35 a.m., and I’m carrying a small Hervé Chapelier top-handle nylon tote straight into homeroom. Its contents include a Nokia 3110 with a bedazzled case, a pink Lancôme Juicy Tube lip gloss, a box of Wintergreen Altoids (and its residual mint dust), a few mechanical pencils, and several folded notes from friends. I’m not sure if this “it-bag” reached any other corners of the world around this timeframe, but the chokehold that the “smalls” had on my high school was unreal. The “large” and more traditional tote-size bags were also popular for carrying books on one very lopsided shoulder. Unfortunately, sometime between my graduation in 2005 and my parents moving out of my childhood home in 2010, my three variations of Hervé Chapelier’s were never seen again.

Since then, I’ve passed by the store in Paris and decided they were too expensive to buy back purely for nostalgia’s sake. I interviewed former Marie Claire editor-in-chief Aya Kanai about hers, and I’d come across a Tumblr photo of designer Phoebe Philo schlepping an absurdly large one. But it wasn’t until I saw a photo on @simplicitycity—an Instagram account devoted to nostalgic images from ’90s street-style magazines and catalogs—that the idea of a slouchy, barely full tote suddenly struck me as incredibly chic. While researching this story, I searched my texts for leads and found that, in 2023, I had texted two friends from high school about it: one lovingly recalled a pen disaster with hers, while the other was ready to plead her case: “The question is, why are we not buying them again? Waterproof, versatile, and many color schemes to choose from. Reasonably priced.”

It came up again in 2024 when I was texting a fellow fashion friend, an excellent writer and secondhand shopper, about our recent shopping obsessions. “I have so many of these saved!” she wrote, sending me a link to a rare mini in striped-print nylon. Though the majority of my wardrobe is secondhand, the thought of a stranger’s crumbs at the bottom—or pen stains inside a used version of one of these—briefly gave me pause.

But finally, in the spring of 2025, I found myself reflecting on my high school wardrobe as talk of my 20-year high school reunion began to materialize. Just a few days later, I somehow happened to meet a chic mom at the library who was, quite literally, using a large tote as her toddler’s “go-bag,” in a navy-and-olive combo she said she had held onto for decades. That was it. Silently (and gently) cursing myself for not securing these amid the move, I fired up a saved search for them on The RealReal.

Buying nylon bags secondhand is very difficult because they can easily be stained, and most people don’t bother cleaning them. Many of the options on the site were in very used condition and, honestly, not very inexpensive. This spring, I found a used mini on eBay for $40 in a khaki-and-“sick”-green combo, which felt like such a timely, kismet snag. While I still mourn my chocolate brown-and-lilac version from 2003, this one still feels like a great find.

I dug up old photos of myself and friends wearing these bags in an extremely down way—with North Face zip fleeces and New Balances, or $8 Soffee shorts from Dick’s Sporting Goods and a Gap ribbed tank—and knew I had to make my second go-around with my Hervé a little more polished. I tried it with jeans and a blazer, cargo pants and stripes, a sleek all-black vibe, and color-blocking with a matching nylon raincoat to lean even further into the design's appeal.

I love how this bag feels like a French girl’s nonchalant shrug: nothing to make a big deal out of, but also effortlessly cool and somehow extremely practical in its capacity (which, as you can see, can hold at least two mini bottles of prosecco). The handles are kind of comically short relative to the bag's proportions, but that impractical detail somehow adds to its quirky appeal.

Because of this, I’m not sure it will fully replace my go-to for completely hands-free dog-walking and toddler-wrangling, a Lindquist Faba bag. But the fact that it can also hold the entire Faba—without requiring me to switch out my cards—is a game changer for when I want to be cute on errands or while catching up over lunch with friends. I did notice that Hervé Chapelier now indeed sells a hands-free crossbody version, which I may have to investigate if things go well with the one I currently have. It very well could be worth the upgrade.

There are many things from the 2000s I’m glad to have moved on from, but I’m glad to have this friendly, two-toned wonder of a tote back in my world again.