A surprising number of luxury handbags have no real way to close. The Hermès Évelyne, originally designed in 1978 by Évelyne Bertrand to hold grooming tools in the stables, retains that open-top character today; a bag the house describes as "lightweight and free from linings," secured only by a small closing tab (Hermès, Sotheby's). The Louis Vuitton Neverfull is, by its own design lineage, an open-top tote with side laces and a small interior pouch rather than a closure across the opening (Sotheby's). The same pattern repeats across the category. Open at the top, contents visible, a wallet two inches below the rim of the bag and one quick reach away from a stranger on a crowded sidewalk.
The handbag industry has, over the last two decades, normalized the open-top silhouette. Customers have accepted it because it photographs cleanly and reaches into easily. It is worth asking whether the trade-off is worth what it costs.
For most working women carrying laptops, wallets, and the basic logistics of a day, the honest answer is no.
Why open tops became the default
The aesthetic case for an open tote is simple. A clean horizontal silhouette photographs beautifully. A zipper interrupts that line. A magnetic flap interrupts it more. A drawstring reads bohemian rather than executive. The cleanest look, visually, is no closure at all.
The functional case is weaker. Open tops are easier to access, one-handed reach, no fumbling for a pull, and they accept oversized items (a laptop sleeve, a folded coat) that wouldn't fit beneath a fixed closure. But those small conveniences come at a specific cost: a bag with no closure is a bag whose contents are visible from above and reachable from above. In a crowded space, a subway car, an airport gate, a busy restaurant queue, that is a real exposure.
The exposure is measurable. Travel insurance research published by Quotezone, summarized by Euronews in 2024, found Italy leading Europe with 478 pickpocketing mentions per million British visitors, followed by France (251) and Spain (111), with the Trevi Fountain, the Eiffel Tower and Las Ramblas singled out as the worst tourist sites within each (Euronews, Quotezone). Travel guides for those same cities are blunt about the mechanism: loose, open bags carried on the shoulder are the easiest targets, and a zipped closure, even a humble one, is consistently the first line of defense (Rick Steves, Corporate Travel Safety).
The wallet sits two inches below the rim. The strap rests on the wearer's far shoulder. The bag swings slightly with each step. A reach in and a reach out takes seconds. That is not a scare story; it is the documented mechanism.
The quieter costs of an open bag
Beyond pickpocketing, an open bag costs the wearer in three smaller, less dramatic ways.
The first is weather. Rain, snow, condensation from a chilled bottle. Most women who carry an open tote have, at some point, opened it to find a damp laptop sleeve inside, or a curled notebook, or a slow leak from a water bottle migrating into the leather lining. A closed top prevents most of this.
The second is dust and floor grit. Each time an open tote is set down, on a restaurant chair, an office floor, a hotel desk, particles settle into the interior. Over months the lining accumulates a layer of grime that is both visible and faintly odorous by the time anyone notices. Specialist handbag cleaners note that everyday dust, alongside transferred dirt from keys, coins, and phones, is one of the most common reasons handbag linings dirty and degrade over time (American Dry Cleaning Company).
The third is spills from above. A tipped wine glass at dinner, a knocked coffee on a café table. With an open tote beside the chair, the spill lands inside. With a closed bag, the wearer has a fighting chance.
None of these alone justifies replacing a beloved bag. Taken together, they explain why the closed-top design is making a quiet return among the more practical luxury houses.
The closure options, ranked by what they actually secure
Not all closures are equal. Ranked from most to least secure:
A full-length top zipper, a continuous zipper across the entire opening, seals contents inside. The zipper itself is the only access point. Travel-safety publications describing pickpocket-resistant bags consistently emphasize lockable zipped closures as a central feature, noting that even a small additional step is enough to redirect an opportunistic thief to an easier target (Pack Hacker, Corporate Travel Safety).
A magnetic flap with a structural fold-over, a leather flap that folds across the opening and seats with a magnet, performs well against rain and dust and is decent against opportunistic theft, but a flap magnet can be opened from the outside with modest pressure. Real-world security is moderate.
A drawstring with a flap, common on bucket bags, closes the opening tightly and then a leather flap covers it. Excellent against rain and dust, decent against pickpocketing because a drawstring takes both hands to open quickly.
A magnetic snap with no flap holds the bag's opening edges together with a single small magnet. Looks invisible. Pops open under any meaningful load. Owners on long-running handbag forums repeatedly flag this as a frustration within a month of carry (PurseBlog forum).
A hidden weak magnet at the top, marketed as "closed" but gaps visibly when the bag is full, is functionally an open bag with a fig leaf.
No closure at all is what it sounds like. Contents visible. Weather exposure. The full set.
A bag at the $500-plus price point should sit in the first three categories. Anything less is a design decision the maker made for visual reasons that the customer pays for later.
Why the full-length zipper is undervalued
For working women specifically, the full-length zipper is the closure most worth having.
The laptop case clarifies the argument. A laptop is the single most expensive object most women carry through a working day. Almost no laptop owner would leave the device visible on a café table while she walks to the restroom; and yet many of those same owners spend the entire day carrying that laptop in an open tote, visible from the top, reachable by anyone passing the bag while it sits beside a chair.
A full-length zipper isn't a guarantee. A determined thief can open one almost as quickly as a hand reaches into an open tote. But it raises the friction enough that opportunistic theft becomes rare. The zipper sound, the visible motion of opening it, the additional second it requires; all of those small frictions protect the bag in practice, if not in theory. This is why travel guides for high-risk European cities universally recommend zipped closures over open ones (Rick Steves, Corporate Travel Safety).
The Apposé Taylor Executive closes with a single full-length top zipper. The silhouette stays flat because the zipper is recessed and the construction is designed around it. It is the kind of choice that costs the maker some visual sleekness in exchange for real-world function; exactly the trade-off worth paying for at this price point.
How to evaluate a bag's closure before buying
Three checks before committing.
First, look for the closure in the product photos. A brand that is proud of its zipper or magnetic system photographs it; a brand whose closure is weak avoids the angle. If a customer cannot tell from official imagery how a bag actually closes, that is itself information.
Second, read recent reviews specifically searching for the words "open," "gap," and "close." A single complaint is noise. Multiple reviewers describing the bag gapping open under a normal load is a signal worth heeding.
Third, if buying in person, place the laptop and wallet inside and see whether the closure still seats with the bag full. Some closures only function when the bag is half-empty. A closure that fails under a normal day's load is, functionally, no closure.
The bag a woman carries should protect what she puts in it. That is a small ask. The bags that fail it are surprisingly common at every price point.
What to do about a bag already owned
If a beautiful open tote is already in rotation, two practical adjustments.
The first is an internal zippered pouch. A small organizer that lives inside the bag and holds the wallet, the phone, the keys. The pouch closes even when the bag does not. This is the same approach experienced travelers describe across handbag forums for cities like Rome, Paris, and Barcelona (PurseBlog forum).
The second is a habit. Wear an open tote on the shoulder in low-risk environments, the office, the home neighborhood, the low-density walk, and switch to a closed bag in high-risk ones: international travel, dense urban centers, public transit. This is what most experienced travelers already do, often without naming it as a decision.
A bag's closure is one of the design details easiest to overlook at purchase and hardest to retrofit afterward. Worth a few minutes of consideration before committing.
A bag that actually closes → Shop The Taylor Executive
Customize your bag → Apposé Wrist Bands & Accessories
SOURCES
• Hermès Évelyne; official brand description: https://www.hermes.com/us/en/content/313975-evelyne-hermes-bags/
• Hermès Évelyne; Sotheby's editorial: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/the-hermes-evelyne-bag-casual-functional-crossbody
• Louis Vuitton Neverfull; Sotheby's editorial on design and origins: https://www.sothebys.com/en/articles/louis-vuitton-neverfull-the-tote-that-is-truly-never-full
• European pickpocketing statistics (Quotezone index, 2024): https://www.quotezone.co.uk/travel-insurance/guides/pickpocketing-statistics-in-europe
• Euronews coverage of European pickpocketing data: https://www.euronews.com/travel/2024/05/02/remain-vigilant-europes-most-heavily-pickpocketed-tourist-spots-revealed
• Pack Hacker; anti-theft bag features: https://www.packhacker.com/blog/general/anti-theft-bag/
• Rick Steves; outsmarting pickpockets in Europe: https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/theft-scams/outsmarting-pickpockets
• Corporate Travel Safety; pickpocket-proof purse design: https://www.corporatetravelsafety.com/safety-tips/pickpocket-proof-purse/
• PurseBlog forum; security when carrying open-top handbags: https://forum.purseblog.com/threads/security-when-carrying-open-top-handbags.753690/
• American Dry Cleaning Company; why handbag linings get dirty: https://americandrycleaningcompany.com/handbags/why-handbag-linings-get-dirty-and-how-to-clean-them-properly/