why we chose terry cloth over leather, nylon, or canvas

When we started designing match a mood, the first decision was the hardest: what material would the bag be made from?

We considered four options seriously. Here's what we found, and why we landed where we did.

Leather

Leather is the obvious choice for a premium accessory. It looks considered, it ages well, and it telegraphs quality. It's also expensive to source, expensive to produce, raises legitimate ethical questions, and is heavily replicated by faux leather (which never quite works).

For a cosmetic bag specifically, leather has another problem: it isn't friendly to the small spills that come with carrying skincare and liquids. A drop of cleanser on leather often leaves a permanent mark. The bag develops not character, but stains.

We loved the idea of leather. The practicality of leather, less so.

Nylon

Nylon is the workhorse of modern bag-making. Light, durable, water-resistant, easy to clean. It's why most outdoor gear and most travel bags are nylon-based.

For a cosmetic bag, nylon has clear functional advantages. It shrugs off spills, holds shape, and lasts forever. The downside: it feels exactly as utilitarian as it sounds. There's a coldness to nylon - a clinical quality - that makes it hard to feel attached to.

We thought about nylon and rejected it: too cold for what we were trying to make. We did, however, end up using nylon as the lining of our bags. Inside, where its strengths matter most, it's perfect. Outside, it would have undermined the whole project.

Canvas

Canvas is a middle-ground option. Cotton-based, sturdy, has a slight texture, looks natural and unpretentious. Many heritage bag brands have built entire collections around canvas.

We came close to choosing canvas. It has a lot of what we wanted: cotton-based, natural, hard-wearing, ages well. But canvas has a roughness to it - a stiffness, especially when new - that felt wrong for a bag designed to be picked up and put down constantly. Canvas is the right material for a bag you put through it. It's the wrong material for a bag you want to enjoy holding.

Terry cloth

Terry cloth is the material we kept coming back to.

It's the cotton fabric used in towels and bathrobes - soft, warm, tactile, immediately familiar. It has the comfort of something you already love, paired with a quality that feels 
unexpected on an accessory. It catches light. It develops character. It feels good in your hand every time.

Three things made it the right choice for us.

• It's tactile in a way the others aren't. Picking up a terry cloth bag is a different sensory experience than picking up a nylon or leather one. The pile, the softness, the weight of the cotton - it all communicates "this is something good" before you  even open it.
• It's a fresh choice in a stale category. Most cosmetic bags look the same because they're made from the same handful of materials. Terry cloth changes the visual language entirely. It makes the bag stand apart on a shelf, in a bag, on a counter.
• It pairs beautifully with embroidery. The pile of terry cloth holds embroidered detail in a way leather and nylon don't. Our motifs sit on the surface of the fabric with a depth and dimension that you'd lose on flatter materials. The craft is more visible. The bag becomes more its own thing.

What about the trade-offs?

Terry cloth has trade-offs, and we should be honest about them.

It needs slightly more careful washing than synthetic alternatives (hand wash only, no dry cleaning). It's not as water-resistant as nylon (which is why our lining is nylon - the spills go inside, where the lining handles them).

We weighed these honestly. None were enough to outweigh the things terry cloth gets right.

The decision, in one sentence

We chose terry cloth because it makes a bag you actually want to pick up, every day, for years. Other materials would have made a bag that worked. We wanted a bag that felt right.