My Royal Souvenir: A Review of the Modalu Bristol/Pippa handbag

Back in mid-May, I saw this picture of Pippa Middleton and knew that I must have that understated grey handbag. It is by an English company called Modalu, which I had heard nothing about. Of course everyone else in the world wanted Pippa's bag too, which actually resulted in Modalu renaming the bag from "Bristol" to "Pippa." And ultimately, they've produced it in other colors as well, and sent a bunch of them to Pippa. That lucky duck. Not only is she Prince William's sis-in-law, she gets free handbags.

{Sigh.}

As I mentioned, everyone and their mom ordered the "Pippa" so the wait time became long. Like several months long. I ordered this bag in the color shark in Medium Grab size back on the 19th of May, I believe.

It came in the week of my birthday.

{August 23rd, feel free to take a moment to mark your calendar.}

I thought I would do a review as I had difficulty finding any about the quality of the bag online.

And hey! You might be wondering the same thing.

My bag came wrapped and stuffed with paper. In addition to the outer paper wrap, it also had a plastic bag around it. It looked to be well protected as it made its journey across the pond.

All of the metal details on the bag, like the label shown here,
and the zipper pulls were either plastic covered or paper wrapped.

You can see the cute shell detail on the zipper pulls.
They are a good, hefty weight, in my opinion.

Pippa (the bag) has 3 compartments.
I fit my very large paper planner in the middle one,
and my working mom survival kit in the top one where you see an
internal zipper pocket. There is also a cell phone pocket and
one other easy access pocket up in there.

The bottom compartment (as shown in this pic) is just a plain zippered section. In my bag, there are usually baby accoutrements, like diapers and wipes.

Front shot of the bag, and the accompanying leather strap,
which so far I have not used.
It really is a beautiful bag. The leather is "like butter" as one of my friends described it the other day. Just really, really beautiful. I might compare this to a classic Coach bag, perhaps? You can't tell from my pics, but unlike Pippa's (first photo), mine has metal feet on the bottom, which I think is a really nice detail on a handbag.

As far as a mom bag goes, I have to say that this one works great from 9-to-5 for me. I think most mothers will agree that a shoulder bag works best with wee ones, which this is not that, and I'm not terribly fond of it with the strap added. So I'm loving carrying it to work each day and swapping it out for the weekend when I am out and about with my little.

I took a bit of a risk for myself (I research a handbag relentlessly before I make a purchase) and bought this one. I love it! It is likely to be in style for years to come as long as the leather wears well, and I take care of it. I would buy another one.

Well done, Modalu!