“If the Daunt Bookshop has become a destination, then the canvas Daunt Book bag has become an unlikely fashion icon. Designed by Diana Liu, the bag achieved cult status when it was photographed on the arm of model Anouck Lepere outside the Tuileries on the Sartorialist Blog…The green and white Daunt bag is now the sine qua non in the wardrobe of any aspiring blue-stocking about town.”
http://www.varsity.co.uk/arts/1575
“Ever since we saw this Sartorialist pic of Jefferson Hack (co-founder and editor of Dazed & Confused, aka ‘father of Kate Moss’s child’) and his fiancée, Belgian model Anouk Lepere, we’ve been thinking about their bag of choice (because we have too much time on our hands) which is a re-usable 'eco’ shopper from Daunt Books… and we rather love it for a number of reasons.
Of course being Jefferson Hack and Anouk Lepere helps enormously in making a cheap canvas shopping bag look cool, but it’s a perfectly nice bag anyway (with the added intellectual posturing and good taste cachet which comes with Daunt Books), and it’s more appropriate (and original) than being seen with, say, a giant Chanel shopper in the current economic climate.”
http://hapsical.blogspot.com/2008/11/jefferson-hack-anouk-leperes-bag.html
The Daunt Bag has been on the receiving end of it’s fair share of cultural commentary - and here is one of our favourites (in a tongue and cheek kind of way):
“Thank goodness… for the Daunt’s Bookshop cloth book bag. Whenever I see one, it reassures me that there are still some upper middle class people out there who like things unflashy. These are the old-money, low-fuss Londoners who would never shop at Harrods, and who go to the opera at Convent Garden but hop on the Number 19 bus home afterwards.
A friend recently spotted one a long way from a Daunt’s branch, in New York, and we discussed the volumes it speaks about the wearer. First of all it tells you, obviously, that he or she buys books and uses environmentally-sound cloth bags. Secondly, that they buy travel books, (preferably published by Eland), hinting that the bag wearer travels to places other than Gstaad. And finally, the understated wealth associated with the bag comes from the location of the bookshop’s branches in Chelsea, Cheapside, Hampstead, Belsize Park, Holland Park and Marylebone.”
http://www.middleclasshandbook.co.uk/journal/2010/11/5/the-best-bag-in-britain-why-a-small-london-book-chains-bag-l.html
Another Blogger seems to agree with the above, posting an image of the one and only Helena Bonham-Carter toting the Daunt Bag with the caption:
