Are rucksacks ever stylish? - The Guardian

A rucksack-sporting model at the Chanel show during this year's Paris fashion week. Photograph: REX/Joe Schildhorn /BFAnyc.com

What's the most stylish way to wear a rucksack?

Andreas, London

"Not at all," is, of course, the obvious answer. It is also emphatically my answer, and this has nothing to do with issues of style. You see, I have a lot of truck with the sack of ruck. This is because rucksacks are, in fact, magical.

Allow me to explain: a person who wears a rucksack – we'll call them a rucker – will shove the most enormous amount of stuff in their sacks (dictionaries, several pairs of shoes, possibly a grand piano), hoik it on to their back with a great deal of huffing and puffing and then, as if by magic, forget the bag is there. How does this happen? After all, the bag is on their back and seems to weigh as much as a person – Joan Collins, maybe. Yet if one were carrying Joan Collins on one's back, one would definitely know that, but ruckers, apparently, do not. The only logical explanation here is that rucksacks must be magical and in possession of some special sparkly quality that renders them weightless and invisible to all those who sport them.

This is why, you see, people with rucksacks pummel all those in their immediate vicinity with their giant sacks as they trundle on their way, whacking them about as they blithely move about trains, pavements or any other public area. They are like destructive dinosaurs, unthinkingly crushing whole towns in their wake.

It's not that they are rude and thoughtless, no. It's that the rucksack is magical. Remember that next time some muppet on the bus happily whacks you in the head on the bus as he turns around, nearly giving you concussion with the collected Encyclopedia Britannica he's decided to tote about on his back all day.

Now, some would say this is surely a design fault of the rucksack. After all, if even bus drivers – not generally known to be the most thoughtful of drivers – do, in the main, remember that they have a large amount of vehicle behind them and just because they cannot see it does not mean it doesn't exist, and therefore drive accordingly, so surely ruckers can do something similar and on a much smaller scale. But I say, one cannot attempt to apply logic when magic is concerned.

Of course, this magic only works when one wears the rucksack the way one is supposed to – over both shoulders. This brings us, regretfully, away from my extended ranting and back to your original question: how best to wear it. Now, it is a source of fascination to me that even an item as hopelessly unfashionable as the rucksack goes through fashion trends itself. Never let it be said that fashion will let any garment go untouched by its whims and sneers.

When I was growing up back in the 90s, anyone who came to school wearing their rucksack over both shoulders might as well have come to school with a giant HIT ME sign on their forehead. Only Dorky McDork would wear their bag in such a back-friendly way. If you wanted to show how cool you were in 1994, you had to sling your bag over one shoulder because giving oneself sciatica is how you proved your street cred back then.

But then, at some point in the early years of this century, hip-hop artists such as Pharrell and other similar youngsters started to wear rucksack-style gym bags over both shoulders and slowly, what was once verboten was now de rigueur and anyone who wears their rucksack over just one shoulder will now look as out of date as Marty McFly did in his life vest in 1955.

Now, this switch in fashion has worked out well for ruckers' backs, but it has been less beneficial to every body part of everyone else because, as previously discussed, when a rucksack goes on both shoulders it instantly becomes invisible to the rucker and extremely dangerous to everyone else.

But there is, as that historical figure Tony Blair would say, a third way, and as Blair probably wouldn't say, that way involves French school exchanges. Along with having Orangina on tap and eating pastries for breakfast, one of the best things about going on a French exchange at school was watching your new Gallic friend put on their rucksack for school. There they go, setting their bag on their bed, ready to shuck it on and – on it goes on the front!

Next time you see a pack of schoolchildren being dragged around Trafalgar Square, look at how they wear their rucksacks: they all wear them on their tummies. And if not all, then definitely the vast majority. Is this a French custom? Do they simply not get it? I don't know, but I like it. For a start, I never get whacked in the face by a French schoolchild's rucksack and, secondly, it is most cheering to see them en masse from a distance because they look like a pack of Santas, on their way to a meeting. Vive la France!

Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@theguardian.com

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