Mission Matt & Nat bags, accomplished!

Here is Part 3 of a as-yet three-part tale: In Which Indyish Goes Stylin’ in Vegan Leather. Thanks to Montreal’s own eco-chic Matt & Nat, of course, as you must have realized from Risa’s post!

As shown in Tessa’s fantastic video, she and Risa braved the first day of the Matt & Nat sample sale — the crowds, oh my! — to pick up two boxes of bags for the Indyish team, leading to quite the joyful meeting that evening. But if you paid attention to the video, you saw that Marilis and I weren’t quite as jumpy as the rest… Our bags weren’t in the boxes!

With every good story comes a good knee-slapper of a coincidence, so here’s our funny part: not only were Marilis and I sans bag, but we were the only two team members to pick the same design — in the same colour! I’d sent Risa a rather to-the-point email consisting of “Jorja Fox bag! Jorja Fox bag!” over and over when we were first told to make our picks, in the natural/cognac linen style shown here. Somewhere between the initial bags announcement and the Risa’s first post about our Matt & Nat bags, Marilis chose the same! I found out when I asked Risa if she posted one of the Jorja bag styles as the picture just for me (seriously, I wouldn’t shut up about that bag)… Well, I was half right!

So have another Jorja bag picture… I’ve been admiring this bag for months! (Could it be my way of finding a replacement for Sara Sidle on CSI? That show’s just not the same without her…) 

That tangent aside (I’m sure there will be more), on Day 4 of the sample sale (when it was sure to be calmer), I got myself on the St-Laurent bus and made my way up to the garment district. Believe it or not, I’d never been up there. Never! I’d never been to a sample sale, either, unless crowded craft markets from my kid-years count! But I was feeling pretty darn confident, especially since I figured I could recognize the building from Tessa’s video (as well as Matt & Nat’s video of the bag-throwing on day 1). Real smart, Lise… There’s something about all those buildings on Chabanel that’s, well, all the same-looking…

But I found the building (I did remember the address, people) and followed the signs for the sample sale as I couldn’t possibly stop by without seeing such an event in action, right? Ok, I admit, my experience was tame in comparison to what it must have been like on Day 1, but I was new to the whole idea! Gimme a break! I like my breathing room! Not quite sure how I did it, but I left the sale room without buying anything and headed to Matt & Nat’s reception area. There they were, those two wily-as-a-Fox bags!

The next day, I giddily wandered down to Preloved to surprise (well, not really, as she knew I’d come eventually) Marilis with her new bag. Oh, we admired! Oh, we dreamed of pulling our laptops out of our bags! Oh, we plotted nerdy identical-bag photos!

Those photos still have to be taken, by the way.

Part of the reason I chose the bag I did — with a major part being that I like the style! – is that, simply put, I heart Jorja Fox. I think she’s fantastic. I think her characters are fantastic and she does a wonderful job creating real people that you feel you could meet and really know as a person. I love that in addition to her big-time projects like ER and CSI, she’s always kept her own “indyish ways” through developing a theatre project, producing shows including musicals about Dusty Springfield. Dusty! What’s not to love there?

Darling Indyishers, why did you choose the bags you did? C’mon, you know you still want to go on and on about ‘em!