10/8/2019 How a free canvas tote became a bigger status symbol than a $10,000 Hermès bag - MarketWatch

How a free canvas tote became a bigger status

symbol than a $10,000 Hermès bag
By Leslie Albrecht
Published: Sept 9, 2017 4:42 p.m. ET

A bag handed out with magazine subscriptions has become a favorite accessory for cultural elites

Adrea Piazza
The free New Yorker magazine tote bag has become a popular status symbol.

Louise Linton, the wife of Treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, carried an Hermès Birkin bag worth roughly $10,000 on her
arm in the ill-fated Instagram post that got her slammed for “flashing her wealth” — and then lecturing a critic about her
“sacrifices.”

But status symbols don’t have to cost as much as a luxury purse. For the price of a magazine subscription, you can get a
bag that carries just as much weight as a social signifier. It’s the New Yorker magazine tote — a frequent sight on the
streets of brownstone Brooklyn, fodder for countless tweets both snarky and gushy, and recently dubbed 2017’s “it” bag by
a London fashion editor, the humble carryall is by far the venerable weekly’s most popular “free gift” of all time.

The New Yorker has distributed 500,000 of them to date, and demand has been so intense that supply hasn’t always kept
pace, said Dwayne Sheppard, vice president of consumer marketing for Condé Nast.

“We strive for the best customer experience we can, but there have been times where we’ve experienced such a surge ...
that it’s been a little bit delayed,” Sheppard told MarketWatch.

Is it because of the bag’s design — a jumbo version of the magazine’s logo contrasting boldly with an expanse of dry-
pasta-colored cotton canvas? The jury is out. Runway guru Tim Gunn and fashion critic Cathy Horyn declined to comment
to MarketWatch on the tote’s fashion merits. Style blog Man Repeller didn’t even respond to an inquiry.

But people probably aren’t really carrying the bag to make a fashion statement. Its power resides in its ability to telegraph
tribal membership. As a symbol, the tote is “more valuable than a fancy handbag, even if the latter costs more and is of

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10/8/2019 How a free canvas tote became a bigger status symbol than a $10,000 Hermès bag - MarketWatch
greater material value,” said Elizabeth Currid-Halkett, author of “The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational
Class,” in an email interview.

“The tote bag is, consciously or unconsciously, a sign of cultural currency,” Currid-Halkett said. “Reading the New Yorker
implies possession of rarefied knowledge, cultural awareness and refinement of taste that goes beyond simply reading
about world happenings. The tote bag allows one to, even if not intentionally, broadcast one’s possession of such cultural
capital.”

Read more: The elite are ‘ruining America,’ claims the most elite-sounding columnist ever

In the era of fake news and with President Donald Trump effectively war with the press, the tote also makes a political
statement. “You’re not just carrying around a bag. You’re saying, ‘I believe this institution is doing real stories.’ It says a
lot,” said Shand Thomas, a 24-year-old freelance copywriter who wrote a fictional essay about losing all of her worldly
possessions but feeling triumphant after receiving the New Yorker tote in the mail.

The piece was inspired by several friends and roommates and their complaints about waiting for the tote to arrive in the
mail, Thomas said. “I thought it was kind of funny that people were not only subscribing to the New Yorker for the content,
but for the status symbol of the bag,” said Thomas, who said she knows at least 10 people who own the tote, some of
whom now apologize for wearing one, because it’s becoming “a little cliché.”

But for others, it’s still a badge.

“I’ve never seen such high demand for quality journalism and brilliant writers and people want to shout it out to people that
this is important to them and the tote allows them to make that statement,” said Condé Nast’s Sheppard, who’s been with
the company for 18 years.

Some proud tote owners have tweeted excitedly that the bag makes them feel like “a real city person,” while others have
expressed self-aware embarrassment. “Any tips on walking around with a New Yorker tote bag without looking like the
kind of a--hole who walks around with a New Yorker tote bag?” wrote one owner.

The tote’s surge in popularity has coincided with record-breaking numbers of new subscribers for the New Yorker. Editor
David Remnick’s writings the day after Trump’s election drove traffic to an all-time high on the magazine’s website, and
January was the biggest month ever for new subscribers, with more than 100,000 sign-ups — the most ever for not only
the venerable weekly but for publisher Condé Nast as a whole, a spokeswoman said. The cheapest way to get the tote is
to pay for a $6 12-week trial subscription, but the price goes up to $119.99 for one-year renewals.

In theory, the tote is only available to New Yorker newbies or people who have let their subscription lapse for at least six
months. But the magazine has, on occasion, sent bags to longtime subscribers who spotted Johnny-come-latelies with the
tote and expressed “some jealousy,” Sheppard said.

You can buy it on eBay, too, of course, and the bag has now inspired a meta version — a tote with an image of the New
Yorker tote on one side, and a picture of a bag from the storied bookstore The Strand on the other.

Want to prove you’re a member of the special New Yorker tote team? Get one fast. The magazine is rolling out new
versions of the bag this fall.

But as status symbols go, the tote doesn’t have much resonance outside the relatively small cultural bubble inhabited by
New Yorker readers. (Paid circulation for the magazine was 1.2 million as of June 2017, according to the Association of
Audited Media.)

“The truth is if you’re not a New Yorker reader (either because you don’t like it or you’re not particularly aware of it as a
publication), this bag will not convey cultural capital or any real value above being a cloth tote — which is very different
than if someone owns an aesthetically beautiful bag that possesses valuable attributes without requiring a cultural
context,” Currid-Halkett said. “The value of the New Yorker bag is what it signifies, not what it actually looks like.”

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10/8/2019 How a free canvas tote became a bigger status symbol than a $10,000 Hermès bag - MarketWatch
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Leslie Albrecht
Leslie Albrecht is a personal finance reporter based in New York. She worked previously as a local news reporter at the
New York City neighborhood news website DNAinfo, and as a reporter at the Modesto Bee and Merced Sun-Star, two
McClatchy newspapers in California's Central Valley. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Graduate School of
Journalism. Follow her on Twitter @ReporterLeslie.

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