Note: this item was provided for review.
I have used, owned, and tested/reviewed loads of bags which fall into the general category of a ‘do it all day-to-day’ bag. Something large enough to take to the office, or to travel with, but also small enough you can generally take it anywhere with you. That’s a recipe which is ripe for compromise, and while I’ve liked a lot of the bags I have tried in this category, they tend to not stick very well over time — the compromises are almost always too great.
And then I got the Bleu de Chauffe Business Musette in khaki. If you read my preview of the bag then you likely can already guess how good I think this bag is. But it’s so good, that it made the Best List for 2024 as the best all around bag, and that was with only a couple weeks of use. Sometimes you know, and with this bag, I can tell you with certainty: nothing else in this class comes close.
It’s that good.
Materials and Specs
Quickly here’s the materials used in the bag:
- 18oz (590gsm) ‘lick wax serge canvas’ from British Millerain as the main body material.
- Dry wax is applied (it does not look like it has been waxed)
- Vegetable-tanned leather on the details and trim.
- Guilloche closure
- Cotton webbing shoulder strap with leather attachments.
- Cotton zipped pocket (dated and signed by the artisan who made the bag)
- Felt laptop sleeve
The bag itself consists of four pockets. Two front open top pockets, a main pocket/compartment (which houses the laptop sleeve and cotton zipper pocket), and a back pocket with a push button closure.
The bag is sized really nicely at 16L, and according the Bleu de Chauffe comes out at these measurements:
- Overall Dimensions: 15.75” (20cm) x 12.6” (32cm) x 4.92” (12.5cm)
- Felt laptop sleeve: 14.56” (37cm) x 10.23” (26cm)
- Back pocket: 14.56” (37cm) x 5.9” (15cm) when secured
- Front Pockets: 6.69” (17cm) x 8.26” (21cm) each.
The bag can hold most 16” laptop sizes in the sleeve. One other note is that the material is all single layer on the bag. This keeps weight, bulk, and stiffness at a minimum, but for those apt to drag bags along the hard streets of NYC, you might wear a hole faster than a double layered bag would.
In Use
As always, I like to look to what the brand says the bag is for, here’s the description from the site:
With its photo reporter style and outdoor look, this is the ideal companion for all your professional exploits. Made from quality materials, it is the epitome of laid-back chic and Bleu de Chauffe artisanal savoir-faire.
Versatile and sophisticated, the Business Fisherman’s Musette is the must-have bag of the season, ready to take with you everywhere with practicality and style.
I am not certain I can do a better job describing this bag than that. It is laid back in looks and feel, but is executed so well with such premium materials — it looks at home in professional settings, and with a suit as much as with a flannel. Out of every bag I own, this is the closest thing I have to a singular bag I could use for the vast majority of my bag needs.
Now, you might be thinking: what’s the fuss, this looks pretty nice but very simple. And that is correct, and that is the fuss.
Generally, in this category of bags you get two types: modern and heritage. The modern bags always look out of place if they are used outside of the intended use (office modern bag looks odd during travel or in the woods, etc). Heritage bags typically lean so hard into that mindset they end up heavy, and fiddly to use with a general lack of features you might want for use today. Not so with this bag.
The Business Musette is lightweight enough that there’s only a small penalty for the heritage materials. Instead of massive brass clasps for connections on the shoulder strap they are leather — the difference readily apparent by the lack of dents on a desk when you set the bag down. You can get in and out of this bag with a single clasp, all with one hand, no buckles, magnets, or stud setups to hide non-functional buckles. There’s one zipper on a removable pouch and no others. There’s no Velcro anything anywhere.
In fact, there’s not a single pocket outside of the laptop sleeve, which is prescriptive about what it should be used for. There’s no nylon to be seen. There’s no pen slot, but there’s plenty of places to keep a pen. There’s no camera cube pad, but plenty of room to add one. There’s no luggage passthrough, becuase it’s not something most people need most days.
When you take all those things into consideration, you can start to paint a picture of why I consider this to be not only the best in it’s category, but simply one of the best bags I own.
Here’s some things I’ve used the bag for thus far:
- Remote work: carrying my essentials and snacks to work from a coffee shop for a few hours with my iPad Pro.
- City Shopping: carrying water, shemagh, first aid, and things we bought along the way.
- Outdoors Exploration: water, gloves, hat, camera, and first aid while walking around exploring the outdoors.
- Travel: camera, headphones, shemagh, first aid, and snacks.
- Dad Bag: water, shemagh, snacks, first aid, etc.
I have zero complaints about how this bag has performed in all of those situations.
Here’s the things the bag gets very right:
- Closure: the reason you carry a shoulder bag over a backpack is the ease of access to your stuff. This secures with a simple brass clasp: push in to release the flap, or slide the clasp back together to secure the bag. You can do this one handed, and quickly. Which means that you are not likely to walk around with your bag unsecured, nor are you going to be frustrated getting the bag secured.
- Strap positions: the shoulder straps are connected at either end of the bag, so the bag carries well balanced, both across body and single shouldered. Likewise, the handles come up from the front and back, meeting in the middle, allowing for easy balance there also.
- Strap connection: The clasp to connect the shoulder straps to the bag is really over done, but in the best way possible. There’s a small brass buckle, which allows the leather to wrap around the brass ring. Leaving an aesthetically pleasing connection, one not easily undone, and crucially a connection which is silent.
- Size: at 16L this bag hits the sweet spot. It’s small enough to not get in the way, while also being large enough it can store most of what you might want throughout the day — whether work or play.
- Front Pocket Sneak: since the two front pockets are open at the top, and the flap secures only in the center of the bag, it’s rather easy to sneak your hand in and grab something out of the front pockets. So if you wanted to stash your phone there, it’s easy to get to it without unfastening the bag.
- Flop: because the bag is single layer, it has a nice flop to it. It’s not so floppy that it looks messy, just right.
- Style: a heritage style, which doesn’t push it too far for the sake of ‘heritage’. This feels like the type of bag you’d see a character in a movie carrying — it kind of works for any situation it’s found in.
- Materials: top notch materials, which feel premium in hand.
- Quality: handmade in France, by a single person, who then signs their work. Exceptional.
There are a couple of “you should know this though” items:
- Front pocket spill: the front pockets are tapered from the bottom to the top and are open at the top. There’s a risk of items spilling out of these pockets if the bag is flipped upside down. Likewise there’s a greater risk of items spilling out if the bag is on its side and the lid is open.
- No padding: the bag itself offers no built in padding, but the felt sleeve is padded. So if you have a water bottle in the bag, you will get that strong clunk sound when you set it on a hard surface.
- Handles impede flap: when you fasten the handles together, you cannot open the flap fully. You can push the flap out of the way, but not flip it open.
There’s a benefit to each of those items above, but a downside as well. None of them are deal breakers for me.
Overall
This is the best all around shoulder bag I own. If someone told me today that I needed to slim down to only one shoulder bag for all my needs — it wouldn’t even be a hard question, I would choose this bag. I love the color and materials on this, and it easily converts to and from work/edc modes.
This is a fantastic bag, and the pricing is lower than a lot of similar bags — most which are not made as well Bleu de Chauffe makes their bags.