I TWITCHED involuntarily as soon as I heard the words.

“You finally bought a Charles & Keith bag!” my best friend, S, trumpeted when she saw my faux leather hobo for the very first time last month.

I couldn’t help the twitch, which started in my left shoulder and ended in my right hand, as I tried to cover the offending piece of hardware on the bag, which bears the homegrown brand’s tiny logo.

Look, I’m no brand whore, but I do like, shall we say, bags of a certain calibre.

I adore gorgeous leather creations from American cult labels like Anna Corinna and Hayden Harnett.

I know they’re well made, and I can carry them with pride.

But I chose to buy the Charles & Keith (C&K) for its lighter weight.

I had problems with my back last year that my full-leather, more expensive bags exacerbated.

(Leather bags, you see, can be achingly heavy to carry.)

The C&K, a carry-all that can hold my yoga gear – clothes, toiletries, water bottle (the bag’s ability to carry this item was a huge selling point) – along with other necessities, doesn’t break my back.

And, hey, it cost $49.90 and not $400.

But the big thing I had to get over was, inexplicably, shame.

The first day I carried it, I looked around and noticed any number of women carrying the C&K label.

(That twitch I mentioned earlier began developing then.)

I silently turned the bag around in my lap, holding it so the logo couldn’t be seen. What was my problem?

It was just a damned bag.

But I knew that anyone who cared to look would know that it was cheap.

The whole thing was a commentary on who I was, what I was about, and what I was willing to accept in life.

That’s what fashion does: It is designed to make a statement about a person.

It’s sometimes argued that fashion is all about creation and construct.

Not only are the clothes and shoes we wear, and the bags we carry, constructs of someone else’s imagination, they are also the realisation of an idea, an inspiration brought to life by someone who has the know-how and skill to do so.

We in turn use these constructs to create an impression of ourselves, by assembling the bits and pieces together.

It’s an amalgamation of various ideas, coming together into a whole that accurately (the key word is accurately) expresses on the outside what is within.

That, in itself, is an act of creation and construction as well.

Cheap was not what I was hoping to create.

(Though in my teenage years, I managed to unwittingly do just that with the length of my skirts. Well, mistakes happen.)

Nor was “faux” what I was hoping to impress upon others.

(Faux has the same ring as the word “fun” but it isn’t, really.)

But I didn’t stop carrying the bag.

At first, I did it out of rebellion against the idea that a mere bag can convey to others who I am.

Personal style refers to someone who has confidence even if they wear a paper bag, a dear friend – a New York fashion blogger who rocks a Forever 21 hobo bag – reminds me.

In the end, I realised that the C&K offered me the one thing the others could not: Absolute (and painless) functionality.

One cannot help but love the thing that simply, unquestioningly, provides faithfully, day in and day out, what one needs.

In the end, it was about what I could carry comfortably, rather than what I was comfortable with showing.

And for those reasons, I’ve come to love it, my Charles & Keith.

Try to tear it off my shoulder now.

We will not be parted, my trusty bag and I.

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