Originally written February 16th, 2017.
2 Sundays ago I was poking around at the Bluegrass Outlet Shops in Simpsonville, and found an absolutely ridiculous deal at the Fossil outlet that I snatched up at something only slightly slower than the speed of light.
TL,DR review: If this bag was a person, I’d marry it, and ya’ll would be invited. Smash that buy button, if you see it for sale online or elsewhere. Full review follows.
The easiest and quickest way I gauge how excited I am about a product is how eager I am to review it. I love testing, evaluating, and reviewing items/products/restaurants/you name it, and if it’s something I love, I find it difficult to force myself to wait long enough to give it enough time for a fair review. I began drafting this review mentally later that day.
Meet Fossil’s Field City Bag! #fanfare
Fossil seems to have a few different variations on this bag. My bag is black canvas with brown leather trim. It’s a handsome looking bag, and every time I glance over at it, I smile. I believe this bag has likely been discontinued, and that’s a shame. I’d like to see it remain, and be issued in more colors and materials. As it is, I had trouble finding this bag online, and the specs are not as precise as I prefer when reviewing. This bag is 10.5/11 inches tall, 9.75/10 inches wide, and 3.5 inches deep.
When it comes to bags, I certainly have a type, and it means that I have trouble finding bags I like. I prefer messenger/mini-messenger/courier bags and mini-backpacks. Canvas and nylon/Cordura are my favorite materials, as I find them to be the most durable. Part of why I like Fossil bags so much is that durability is important to me, but it’s hard to find bags that are tough and durable but also attractive, tasteful, and preferably low-key. I like simple, classic designs that are tastefully executed. Fossil strikes that balance nicely for me, and does so at a reasonable price.
The front exterior of the bag features a flap secured with a magnetic closure. When lifted, the flap reveals a nicely sized zipped pocket that is almost wide enough to fit my iPad Mini in. The main compartment of the bag is nice and roomy. I unfortunately can’t find cubic inch details, but I was able to put 11 DVD cases in the bag without even trying, if that tells you anything. (Some people spend Saturday nights in movie theatres, in art galleries, in bars. I apparently spend them cramming DVDs into bags. Sometimes, the joke writes itself.) You’ll remember that one of the complaints I had about the Miller Sling Pack I bought from Fossil a few months ago was that when the main compartment was mostly full with unsecured items, it would pooch out and into the area occupied by the front pocket, but that is not a problem here. The main compartment also provides 3 pen loops, 3 additional pockets, and a zippered pocket that fits and will zip over an iPad Mini at a stretch. The back exterior of the bag features another pocket that fully conceals an iPad Mini.
The hardware and design accents are well executed here. The flap that secures the zipped pocket on the front of the bag is edged with dark brown leather, and also has a leather pull made of the same leather. There are only 3 zippers on this bag (front pocket, main compartment, and the zippered pocket inside the main compartment,) and each have a leather pull on them made of the same aforementioned leather. That leather also connects the strap loops to the bag itself, and is triple-stitched to the bag immediately below the strap loops to secure them further. The strap is adjustable, and while likely sturdy, is one of my very few suggestions to improve this bag. The aforementioned Miller bag had a feature I also found on my Maxpedition Lunada and other bags- plastic connectors that you could easily buckle or unbuckle to quickly and easily take the bag off. Every single time I take this bag off, I miss the hell out of that feature, but I imagine it likely adds cost, and while I’d love to have it because I like my gear overengineered, it isn’t all needed. The strap for both bags is the same, and I do wonder a bit about long term durability, though I’m sure it’ll be just fine. I’d like it to be just a tad more durable, but, again, that isn’t really what this bag is for and would undoubtedly add cost. If the material of the bag was different, I would suggest reinforcing/protecting the bottom with canvas, leather, or another material, but the durable canvas makes that completely unnecessary. I love canvas bags.
I’m not really sure what to tell you about the organization of this bag, because I use it differently than I suspect most do. You’ll remember that I now use a Maxpedition Pocket Organizer in OD Green for small items because of the sparse organizational solutions available on the Miller bag, and I highly recommend that approach or something like it here as well. With any bag, really. I crammed some earplugs into one of the internal pockets (I always travel w earplugs, and usually have at least one pack/handful in whatever main bag I have with me because I’m a hardass about protecting my ears) but other than that, I don’t really use them, and I’m not sure whether I think others would. I’m not sure how well the organizational scheme would serve the needs of most women, but the plot thickens when you learn that like the Miller bag, Fossil classifies this as a bag for men, which seems really bizarre to me, so… your guess is as good as mine on that front. Seems a little too small to be a bag for men, but that’s subjective.
Simply put, I adore this bag. Every time I see it, I smile. Every time I get to use it, I smile. It is perfectly sized for me; I didn’t even have to adjust the straps. It reminds me a whole lot of another of my very favorite bags, LL Bean’s Continental Field Bag, which was released in a few different versions but is sadly no longer extant, and is the LL Bean bag that I came closest to wearing out. The Field City bag is the perfect size to put on your lap to balance something else on while out in public if need be- I’m typing this on a laptop I’m perching on the front of the bag, just for the hell of it. It’s the perfect size bag to toss in your passenger seat on your way to an adventure, and I like that it is black and disappears relatively easily in the floorboard, in shadows, or against dark backgrounds. Low key is good.
The tag on this bag was $98. Whether or not that’s worth it to you is subjective, but at that price I’d rate it a B+ without batting an eye. However, the steal deal I mentioned at the beginning of the review is that this bag was 70% off the day I bought it. I paid something like $38 after tax, and I haven’t paid prices like that for a long-term, daily driver bag since I was in high school. At that or a similar price, it is a solid A+.