A Manly Colour For Manly Men - Think Tank

Someone today mentioned that the new range of Think Tank Retrospective bags did not have a very manly colour...I was taken aback, as I had seen the Slate Blue bags in 30, 20, 10, 7 and 5 size on the shelves alongside the Pinestone and Black bags but hadn't thought about it.

Now that I have, I am not sure exactly what a manly colour is...men come in various colours, from sort of a pasty ivory white up near the Arctic Circle down through various tints of pink and brown until you get to the equator - then they can be very brown indeed and in some cases almost black. Along the way you get sort of an all-over red in Arizona and Montana and a sort of spotty red and white in Killarney. I did once see a green man in England, but I suspect it was just paint for the tourists.

Is slate blue sort of weak and wishy washy? The RAF, USAF, RCAF and RAAF didn't seem to think so when they ordered up their uniforms, and the USN used to paint cruisers that colour. Perhaps they just got a special from the tailors or paint shop and didn't want to say anything about it.

How about the greenish sort of colour that Think Tank call Pinestone? The closest thing I could find in the colour charts seems to be a sort of clothing colour that the used to call Feld Grau. It seems to have been popular with the German army, though perhaps it was adopted because they ran out of lederhosen. I am no expert in these things.

Black, now there's a manly colour. Black pudding, Black Prince and little black dress - after all, if Coco Chanel wasn't manly, who was? Plus it doesn't show the stains from the mascara.

Well, enough with the colour. I'm going to hitch up my peach scarf around my lavender angora sweater and take some pictures of the Think Tank Retrospective 30 in Slate Blue. It has heavy fabric and discrete stitching and does not look like a camera bag at all, even when it is full of gear. Look at the strap there and the heavy quality of the buckle. It might not be manly, but it certainly is sturdy.