New, Unworn and Pre-Owned Hermès Evelyne Bags · London

The Evelyne began as stable equipment. In 1978 Évelyne Bertrand, who ran the equestrian department at Hermès, needed a bag for carrying grooming tools — brushes and hoof picks, damp and dirty after use. The perforated H on the front was not a logo. It was ventilation, cut to let air through to wet bristles, and it is the only reason the most recognisable marking in the house exists at all.

Almost fifty years later the bag is unchanged in every essential: a soft, flat body, one long strap, an exterior pocket on the back, and that perforated H. It is worn across the body and nowhere else. Of all the classics it is the one that most obviously was not designed to be looked at, which has not stopped it becoming, by volume, one of the most carried bags the house makes.

The sizes are lettered rather than numbered. The TPM at 16 is the smallest, worn high and close, holding a phone and cards. The PM at 29 is the everyday size and the one most people mean. The GM at 33 takes a laptop sleeve and a bottle. The TGM at 40 is a genuine carry-all and now uncommon. Because the bag is soft and flat, each size sits noticeably differently against the body rather than simply holding more.

The strap matters more here than the leather. The Amazone strap — the canvas one, in the house's own weave — is what most Evelynes wear, and its colour changes the whole piece; an all-leather strap turns the bag formal and heavier on the shoulder. When buying pre-owned, the strap is also the part that shows wear first and the part most often replaced, so it is worth knowing which one is on the bag and whether it is original.

Clémence is the leather the Evelyne is most often made in, and it suits the flat body: heavy grain, soft fall, forgiving of a bag that is worn against a coat all day. Togo resists marks slightly better. Epsom appears on some pieces and keeps the panel crisper. Because the front is a large, uninterrupted plane, the grain and the colour are read at a distance, and a saturated shade carries further on an Evelyne than on almost any other model.

It is the Hermès bag that gets used hardest, and the secondary market shows it. An Evelyne that has been worn for years will show it at the strap, at the bottom corners and along the edges of the perforated H, where the leather is cut. That is normal for the model rather than evidence of neglect, but it means condition ranges more widely here than on bags that spend their lives in dust bags.

For anyone entering the house, the Evelyne is the most honest starting point: hands free, light, weatherproof enough for London, and impossible to mistake. It is also, model for model, among the most accessible ways to own something genuinely made by Hermès rather than something branded by it.

Every Evelyne at JULL is inspected in our London workroom — the strap and its hardware, the cut edges of the perforated H, bottom corners, the back pocket, stamp and stitching — and we state whether the strap is the original. Pieces are new, unworn and pre-owned, sourced through European boutiques below boutique retail where the market allows. Shown by appointment in London, filmed in detail for clients elsewhere, delivered insured across the UK.