My favourite style of bag from our Collection has to be the
Hobo Bag.
It has the perfect volume that accentuates the beautiful kitenge prints. It is casual but at the same time can also elevate a simple outfit. I love the simplicity also in its sewing pattern.
However, me not being native English speaker and as I was editing my website, I started wondering what does the word hobo actually mean?
After a quick search in Google, Hobo bags are very popular and are used in the collection of many high end Brands.
I also bumped into an interesting article from Vogue titled
Why We Need To Rethink The Term Hobo Bag BY SARAH RAPHAEL
I found this piece very interesting so I am going to paste exactly the authors words.
“Hobo” was first used to describe migrant workers in America at the end of the 19th century, who were essentially homeless and rode freight trains looking for work, carrying their belongings in a sack tied around a bindle stick. It’s this marker that fashion borrowed to describe a slouchy bag with a handle. According to Tony Thorne, a specialist in slang, jargon and cultural history at King’s College, the first hobo bag was created in 1936 and retailed for 35 cents.
She continues to say that, "As fashion call-outs go, the hobo bag is complicated because in context the word is not necessarily derogatory and out of context it’s become so divorced from its meaning that most people don’t make the connection."
Despite its semi-heroic history, the contemporary understanding of the word is an impoverished, homeless person, hence hobo bag is tantamount to “homeless person bag”, which most people would never dream of saying. So why are we still using hobo to describe handbags sold for upwards of £1,000?
Mark Reay, a fashion photographer and model who walked for the likes of Versace, Moschino and Missoni and appeared in an episode of Sex and the City slept rough on rooftops in New York for six years. He had a real hobo bag that he once took to a Marc Jacobs after party – “full of warm clothes to later change into” – and, although he doesn’t find the term hobo offensive, he says: “The struggle of the homeless can’t be denied, and I do find it offensive that the fashion industry, one of the most wasteful industries ever, has exploited that.”
Reading about all these, I am not sure if the term hobo bag sounds positive to me or "in fashion" anymore. Or something that will elevate us as a humanity.
IT definitely puts a tag on people. I would like to think that when you wear a beautiful bag it should not matter if you are rich, poor, homeless, young, old.
So, I decided to change the name of our Africanism Bags to "Poa Shoulder Bag". Poa means cool in Swahili, so yes when you wear our bag you can feel really cool ;)
What is your opinion on this? If you want to read all of this interenting article you can find it in this link.