Adam Savage is clearly overjoyed about his new bag. I met up with the gear-obsessed designer, former Mythbusters host, and Tested.com[1] editor-in-chief at his workshop in San Francisco to see his latest creation. He's designed his first carry-all utility bag and launched a new brand, Savage Industries, to market it. With the same childlike glee he exudes on camera[2], Savage flipped the thing around on the workbench, opening and closing it, zipping and unzipping, as he pointed out all the features.
Yes, the bag is white. It only comes in white, at least for now.
It's constructed almost entirely out of up-cycled cloth from boat sails, so each bag has some unique quirks, and every specimen comes off the production line with a broken-in look. The handles are held together by magnets instead of snaps or velcro, which, if you've fiddled with those types of closures on your own bag, is a welcome innovation. You just bring the handles near one another and they jump together with a satisfying clonk. Also clever: The straps are stiff enough that the clasped handle stays propped upright like a little pup tent frame. Unzip and pry open the bag, and it holds its shape in that configuration too, thanks to a pair of spring steel inserts that run around the lip and keep the mouth agape like the jaw of a whale shark.
There's a pocket inside to hold your notebooks (Savage adores Tom Sachs Ten Bullets notebooks[3], though he says his pocket is brand-agnostic) and, via a stack of horizontal loops, your pens and pencils. On the Kevlar-reinforced bottom, there are strips of velcro. This detail hints at accessories to come,...