I like the Nike Heritage Eugene 2.0 Winterized Backpack for the everyday end of this edit: its water-repellent fabric, three zip pockets and 15-inch laptop sleeve cover the useful basics. For work, look at padded straps and a sleeve that fits your actual laptop. The quilted MZ Wallace Metro Backpack Deluxe and Think Royln's Headliner are the ones I would pick when the backpack has to look like part of the outfit. The groups below run from the decision that matters most to the ones you make afterwards.

What decides a backpack is capacity, a padded laptop sleeve and how the straps sit. Cole Haan's Alexandria Small Flap is the small, dressed-up pick, and Aimee Kestenberg's Dakota Travel Backpack is the one that survives a flight. In the next group I would look hardest at CALPAK's Luka laptop backpack, TUMI's Just In Case for a packable carry-on companion, and the TUMI Halsey when the commute is long. Whatever you choose, load it with your real laptop before you decide.

A backpack looks best when the straps sit snug and the bag stays high on the back. From the second group, Antler's Discovery 28L in Dark Forest Green is the one I would take on a trip, because it also works as a commute bag. This next group is a wider mix, from MZ Wallace quilted nylon to Longchamp's Le Pliage and a Rains clip-front, and the designer backpacks close the edit. None of it needs buying all at once. One backpack from each group is usually enough.

The designer backpack has one origin story, and it is a fabric. Miuccia Prada took over her family's leather goods house in 1978, and in 1984 she introduced a backpack in industrial nylon, the stuff of tents and parachutes, because she found the bags around her too formal and too traditional, W Magazine reports. Harper's Bazaar names that first bag the Vela, and in 2019 the house remade its nylon as Re-Nylon, a regenerated yarn made from waste such as old fishing nets. The Prada Re-Edition 1978 and the Small Re-Nylon in this grid are its direct descendants.

Miu Miu, which Miuccia Prada started in 1993 and named after her family nickname, takes the same shape somewhere looser. The Small Corduroy and the Canvas Backpack are soft and slouchy, and the Softy in red leather is the one I would carry with a long camel coat. The Row, which Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen founded in 2006, makes the Harper in plain smooth leather, the quietest bag here. The Bottega Veneta Andiamo, the Maison Margiela 5AC drawstring and the Burberry Horseshoe are the ones with a house signature you can spot across a room.

Three are pre-owned: a Gucci Bamboo Tassel, a Fendi Zucca and a quilted Chanel, which is the gentlest way into a house you have wanted for years.

My test for a designer backpack is to load it with what you really carry, a laptop, a water bottle and a sweater, and look at it side on in a mirror. If the leather folds over itself or the straps twist, it is a handbag pretending. What I would skip: a structured leather backpack for a daily commute in the rain, since nylon was chosen for exactly that.

I would start with the commute or trip I make most often and pay for the features I use every week. A padded laptop sleeve matters on workdays, while an easy-to-pack main compartment earns its space on longer trips. If you want to keep browsing, I also put together Everyday & Travel Bags and The Bags Edit.