For a long time the canvas tote was the thing a brand gave away rather than sold, and the change came from two directions at once. Leather got heavier to carry and harder to justify for a bag that lives on a floor, and canvas turned out to hold a print and a logo better than most people assumed. What you get now is a canvas body with leather handles and trim, which is the format almost every house has settled on. It carries a laptop, survives rain badly, and washes in a way leather never will.

Coach's Cargo Small Canvas Tote is the most structured option here and the one that reads least casual. Marc Jacobs contributes three, a large stripe mesh version, the Babe in crochet and the Babe in canvas and leather, which is a house treating the category as a real line rather than an afterthought. Tory Burch's Perry Canvas Tote borrows the hardware language from the leather bags. Michael Kors goes furthest from the brief with the Isa large crochet straw fan tote, which is more of a summer bag than a school tote bag in the literal sense. Bloomingdale's and AQUA both make plain large canvas totes that do the job without any of the branding conversation.

Decide first whether you need structure or capacity, because the two rarely coexist in this category. The plain large canvas totes are the honest answer for most people and they carry more than the designer versions do. Leather trimmed handles are the detail worth paying attention to, since that is where a tote fails first and a reinforced join lasts years longer. Crochet and mesh look good and hold small objects badly, which matters if you carry pens and cables. Coach's Cargo is the pick if you want something that still looks deliberate when you walk into a meeting with it. If you take one thing away, it is that the best tote is the one you stop protecting, so buy a material you are willing to put on the floor.