Bar-tacked at every join, sewn in Salt River

Daypacks, rolltops, duffels and the small things that go inside them. Cut and stitched by four people in a first-floor room off Albert Road, Cape Town.

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A bartack is forty stitches in one place

A bartack is a dense little block of stitching, forty-odd passes back and forth, put exactly where a strap meets a bag and the load tries to pull it off. It is not decorative. Nobody notices one until it is missing, and then they notice nothing else. We sew ours in a first-floor room off Albert Road in Salt River. Four machinists, two machines older than anyone using them, and a cutting table built out of a door. About eighty bags a week leave here, which is as many as four people can make without hurrying. Nothing is sent out to be finished somewhere cheaper and nothing is imported and relabelled. If a seam opens in the next five years, post it back — most likely the person who sewed it will be the one who repairs it.

The packs

Daypacks

Kloof 22 Daypack

R1 890.00

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Daypacks

Salt River Rolltop 30

R2 250.00

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Duffels

Overberg Duffel 45

R2 640.00

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Hip packs

Contour Hip Pack

R690.00

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Sleeves

Flatbed Laptop Sleeve

R540.00

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Organisers

Grommet Pouch Set

R390.00

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What the pack is actually made of

Eighteen-ounce cotton canvas, waxed on the base panel because a bag spends half its life standing on wet ground at Cape Town station. YKK zips throughout, number 8 coil on the main openings — the number 5 is what gives out first and saves about nine rand. Webbing is 40mm polypropylene, rated far past anything you will put in a daypack. Between fourteen and twenty-two seams in a bag depending on the model, and every load-bearing junction among them carries a bartack sewn through the back panel rather than tacked onto a facing. Five years on the stitching, no receipt needed, because we recognise our own work when it comes back. Fading canvas and scuffed leather are not faults. That is the bag getting older, which is rather the point.