January 19, 2009
Briefcases are the new suspenders
That is, nobody seriously uses them:
Mr Gringras says he retired his briefcase years ago when he realised all he did with it was ferry to work and back journals that he never read. So it would seem that even briefs do not use briefcases these days.
Kevin Pratt, marketing manager of Cheapflights, the flight comparison website, prefers a brown leather over-the-shoulder man-bag. “It keeps my hands free when I’m travelling. I’ve got an iPod and a mobile and it’s big enough to carry a laptop and papers.”
He says the briefcase is impractical: “A lot of other people in our office use rucksacks because they cycle to work. But I don’t think there are any briefcases. I’m 42 and I’ve never considered carrying one.”
There have been a number of drivers contributing to the demise of the briefcase – the fact that presentations are stored on USB keys, the rise of mobiles and the BlackBerry. But the final nail in the briefcase’s coffin has probably been the relaxation of dress codes that accompanied the dotcom boom.
Gosh, and I remember the days when my youthful affectation allowed me to have one.
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I also used to smoke a pipe.
So if I decided to take up wearing a bow tie and suspenders with a short-sleeved shirt and a briefcase I would probably not be taken very seriously? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?
for my 14th birthday, i asked for a zero halliburton aluminum attaché. it was, it seemed to me, the defacto standard for the transportation of cash, drugs, weapons, and all other elements of bad-assery. i used i it to carry my piano lesson books.
raynor–I love it!
I actually like suspenders and wore them quite a lot to work in the ’90s. (I have no butt–my pants sag–and I don’t like belts.) But now I’m retired and nobody cares what I look like. No shoes, no shirt, no butt, no problem.
I use a big rolling briefcase for school that makes me look like a drunk pilot or a machine tool salesman. It has pockets all around and lots of space inside. And tomorrow–the day classes start–it will be turned up sideways in a rolling crate that will leave enough room for even more crap to be loaded. I have a lot to take back because at the end of each semester I like to make like I’m not going back and I clean everything out of my office. Then I have to cart it all in again when I go back.
Daryl, why do you pretend you’re not going back? To scare them all?
I wouldn’t leave my stuff on campus over semester break if I wasn’t going to be there most days either!