Shedding the tyranny of the wallet

To echo an infamous statement once made about the lowly shopping cart basket, the wallet is tyranny.  In this age of the mobile phone, the PDA, the RFID fob, the massive automobile locking/alarm/ignition system remote, and the iPod, who can get away with carrying a wallet alone?  Convergence isn't going to happen any time soon, my friends, and clipping that phone to your waist band just ain't gonna cut it.  Aesthetics matter.  The solution is quite clear, and yet... and yet the pressure to conform to societal norms is intense.  Hence the tyranny of the wallet.

You heard it here first: I'm freeing myself from the shackles of walletdom, and I'm going to start toting a man-purse. 

I've been contemplating this move for a while, a long while, in fact.  Back in 1991 my engineering boss at the Nissan Technical Center in Atsugi used a man purse, and it made a lot of sense from a utilitarian standpoint: having everything in one purse made it a lot less likely that he'd leave a stray pack of cigarettes in a chassis dynamometer, misplace the keys to his diesel Sentra, or drop a data log at the test track.  It made perfect functional -- or behavioral design -- sense.

It's the visceral and reflective levels of design which kept me from taking the plunge.  But two recent developments have tipped the balance in favor of the man-purse:

1. When a reputable venture capitalist  makes a very public endorsement of the man-purse, well, that means its societal meaning is changing.  A VC with a purse?  That's a compelling use case, a great story.  And it works well at the reflective level of design.
2. I'm no clotheshorse, but I do care about personal aesthetics. So I can't rationalize carrying a cordura camera bag turned purse.  Or worse, a fanny pack.  Enter the Freitag Mancipation line of man-purses.  They meet all my visceral design criteria, and because they're Freitag they'll work well and stroke my mojo, too.

So watch out for me and my man-purse.  Now I've just got to figure out how to buy one of these Freitag thingies without jetting over to Davos, because I can't find it on the internet. 

Honey, where's my wallet?

Comments

[jens]

oootch. i will definitely NOT forget where i heard it first.

....
what about a navy blazer, some cargo pants/shorts for summer or the ultimate safari jacket

http://www.lostworldsinc.com/HuntingSafariBushJacket.htm

instead.

[jens]

come on folks!... we can't let this man run into his misery.

we need more alternatives to this thing.

come on!
suggestions!

[Valentin]

Take a look at the Domkee Shooter's bags. Either black or sand. The small ones. They are originaly intended as photo gear bags, but in a way that they do not look to much like a photo bag. They wear marvelously, are very light, have a subdued style. Try the smaller one in sand or some more flat models. of course you can use a a bugatti green one, but do not dare to choose the blue ones. Sand or black, definitely. All the pockets are pickpocket safe. They are carried by www.tiffen.com
No plug intended

[Valentin]

Got it! The F 803 Camera Satchel is my true love.
Val

[Bob R.]

Briefcase, fanny pack, daypack, laptop case, man-purse, whatever.

I guess the only benefit to the new label is that I might get to take something extra onto the plane.

[john winsor]

Hey, Diego.

Good post. I love my purse!

Freitag's got it going on. I wrote about them today in a different context.

Here's the place to buy a Freitag purse. http://www.freitag.ch/products/hauptframe_bag.htm. Check out the F95, F96 and F97. Interestingly, they are not under the mancipation name.

[Charles]

You could go the other direction entirely and get one of these ultrathin spinnaker cloth wallets:

http://www.all-ett.com/

Featured recently on NPR as an example of a product that hit a tipping point into runaway demand.

Boy do they need brand identity help.

[burke]

Diego - you're missing the real opportunity, and possibly purposely -- the real bright side of design is that you are already carrying items that should be able to handle all of the responsibilites of your wallet. Money, ID, photos, contacts, etc... it should all be digital anyway and stored on one of those digidevices you want to carry...the wallet is dead, passe - all I need is one mega device: Phone, iPod, Palm, digital debit card.