Sophie Hulme totes … what’s the deal?

If you haven’t already spotted one of these little cuties casually slung over the arm of a fash editor in a street style snap, then you haven’t been paying attention. Sophue Hulme totes are the ‘IT’ bag of the fashion set, so here’s a peek at the brand and my top 6 picks for spring.

After graduating from Kingston University with the student of the year award, Sophie Hulme went on to win the British Fashion Award for emerging talent in AW2012. I love the fact that each season every garment and item comes with a specially designed trinket. For AW12 it was a dinosaur, and for SS13 it was an ice cream scoop, with the idea being that dedicated fans can collect these along the way, and build up an oversized charm bracelet – cute right!?

I snapped one up in the sales just before Christmas last year in a lovely pastel hue, which now gets admiring comments every time I step out of the front door. Yesterday I bumped into a chum who was so keen to have one of her own, I thought I might post a stack of them to help her choose…

1. Pink tote, 2. Pastel-orange tote. 3. Frog pendant tote, 4. Relaxed tote bag, 5.  Mint tote  6.Leopard print tote.

As with any designer item, these bags come at a punchy price point. When I was stalking them I headed over to www.shopstyle.com, keyed in my search criteria, and then when a whole slew of them popped up, I slapped a ‘sale watch’ trigger on the search – a nifty part of the shopstyle search engine. A few weeks later, my lovely pastel blue one flagged up as being on sale at nearly half price – genius! If you don’t mind which colour you end up with, then the ‘sale watch’ thing is definitely a great way to go.