The must-have shopping bag that's green AND fashionable

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Bag lady: Keira Knightley

by SEAN POULTER



It has been seen on the arm of some of the world's most beautiful women - a must-have designer shopping bag that has an official price of £5 yet sells for as much as £400 on eBay.

The "I'm Not a Plastic Bag" cotton and rope creation by Anya Hindmarch(correct) is at the forefront of a battle among retailers to grab the "green" high ground.


Supporters see the bag as the icon of a move against the throwaway plastic bag given away in their billions by supermarkets and other retailers every year.

When the eco bags first went on sale in March, some 500 people queued to buy one at the designer's fashionable Notting Hill store.

The queues will be forming outside Sainsbury's supermarkets, which has gone its hands on 20,000 of the sought-after bags.

It is part of a wider campaign by Sainsbury's to try and shift shoppers to opting for re-usable bags, rather than the conventional plastic carriers.



The bag has become a must-have accessory for the celebrity classes amid the assertion that it combines both designer cache while shouting that the user cares about the planet.

Among the world's most famous women seen toting the bag are Oscar-winning actress Reese Witherspoon, Keira Knightley and Lily Allen.

The editor of US Vanity Fair magazine, Graydon Carter, even used the reusable bag as the goodie bag at his Oscar party earlier this year.

Rather embarrassingly for Marks & Spencer, the model Erin O'Connor, one of the faces of its advertising campaign, has been snapped carrying one of the Sainsbury's bags.

While the agent for another M&S advertising icon, Twiggy, has also been on the phone to Sainsbury's chasing one of the bags for the model.

The supermodels Lily Cole and Ben Grimes-Viort have also been pictured using the bags.

The designer was approached to develop the bag by the We Are What We Do group, which calculates the nation uses 167 plastic carriers per person every year.

The group advocates that small lifestyle changes made by large numbers of people can have a major impact in reducing waste and creation of the carbon, which is blamed for creating global warming.

Archive: New York Times - Leading Manufacturer of Reusable Shopping Bags

nytimes.com/gst/fullpage

Alex Lindsay: Shopping Bag Designer,



By RON ALEXANDER


LEAD: Consider the designer shopping bag. Consider Alex Lindsay. To all intents they're synonymous.

Consider the designer shopping bag. Consider Alex Lindsay. To all intents they're synonymous.

Mr. Lindsay is the founder and owner of ModernArts, a company that creates totes for such retailers and brands as Barneys, Polo, Charivari, Giorgio Armani, Chanel, Gucci, Yves St. Laurent and Paloma Picasso.

His next bag will be for Fahrenheit, Christian Dior's new line of men's toiletries. Clearly, these shopping bags are more chic than schlep.

To his way of thinking shopping bags are worn, rather than carried, as a badge of allegiance to a social group - the one represented by the store. With this in mind, ModernArts weighs decisions about shape, size, paper texture, even materials for handles and the estimated height of the client's customers. Mr. Lindsay feels that packaging ''should reflect the attitude or specific essences of the client.''

Mr. Lindsay, who founded his business in 1968, when he was 25 years old, said that nowadays he finds the work more challenging than ever. ''Good design must startle,'' he said, ''because there is so much more of it around.''

Between bags, he said, he has developed a gold mine in Greece and a construction company in the South. Last year he opened a restaurant, Grappino, in the garment district near the ModernArts offices at 38 West 39th Street. (His first business, which he started while attending Bard College and majoring in philosophy and fine arts, was a restaurant in Poughkeekpsie, N.Y.). He said he also owns ''a couple of little buildings around town.''

''I enjoy my life,'' he said.