Making Something Meaningful Out of the Ultimate Blank Canvas
What is a bag? Really, think about it. Whether it's a five-figure leather handbag or a cheapo tote, we're talking about a chunk of fabric wrapped into itself and gussied up to taste.
Bags "are a glorified sack," Conor Utri puts it. But all the more reason to glorify that sack.
Goodspeed, Utri's nascent imprint, was founded this year with one purpose (for now). "In a reductive sense, the brand's focus is on ‘bags,'" he says, fully aware that the accessories business is lousy with "bag brands." But how many of those makers are actually reconsidering the genre?
Utri's resume includes stints with Our Legacy, Acne Studios, Daniel Arsham's clothing line, and even Raf Simons' Fall/Winter 2019 partnership with activewear brand Templa. He thus gets the appeal of honest-to-goodness niceties. But, more specifically, Utri is interested in creating fine fare fitted with actual utility, as opposed to pure indulgences that demand doting and babying.
Goodspeed's humbly handsome bags walk that line, all individually made in Sweden of Italian-made and deadstock materials. Their shapes are familiar, if you know your bag history, but they're also "firmly anti-nostalgia," Utri says.
"The primary driving force of Goodspeed is to make something truly new," he continues. "Like all design, this is done best through dialogue with what has come before. But it is hugely important for me that the designs I put out with Goodspeed push into a new direction."
He imagines Goodspeed as a gateway drug for a menswear customer who may have previously considered bags an afterthought — After all, what is a bag but a glorified sack? — but should view bags with a geeky enthusiasm typically reserved for footwear.
Citing influences like textile genius Issey Miyake and high-low interior designer Yrjö Kukkapuro, Utri describes bags as "a blank canvas" upon which he iterates elements of elegance.
A soldier's helmet bag and personal effects pouch, the newsman's shoulder bag, the fisherman's carryall tote: They're the foundation of Goodspeed's soft shapes, reborn through panels of washed canvas and thick metal straps wrapped in pop-color grips. Useful, hardy, brainy. These are bags born of workwear's usefulness and elevated by the grace of good taste, as much an outfit accent as a reliable everyday carry. A glorified sack, they ain't.
"A great bag has a personality, a distinct character, and design identity all encapsulated in one object," says Utri. "All the elements should complement and inform the others, with no other viable arrangement. I know the design is complete when it feels like no other form would make sense. "
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