Carry on collecting: why old British shopping bags are suddenly in demand | Life and style

When it comes to everyday objects, a supermarket carrier bag could be the ultimate one – a thing we’re more accustomed to squeezing into a drawer or using until it falls apart than giving any special treatment.

But these most mundane items are now enjoying something of a new life.

On secondhand sites including eBay, Vinted and Depop, old Marks & Spencer carrier bags and those for other supermarkets such as Tesco, Netto and Waitrose are being sold for about £10 – a big mark-up considering they were originally given away for free. Vinted reports that searches in 2026 have risen by 35% since last year.

Once a deeply unremarkable receptacle for the weekly shop, the humble carrier bag has become a bona fide collectors’ item. There’s even an Instagram account dedicated to them – Carry a Bag Man has more than 15,000 followers.

Jeremy Leslie, the founder of MagCulture, a magazine shop in London, sees this as part of a wider trend toward the tangible. “We see it with magazines,” he says, “people want real things in their lives. These are nostalgic items that take people back to when they were growing up, as a reassuring totem.”

If some might balk at the idea of collecting old plastic bags, Tim Sumner is not one of them. He set up the Paper Bag Archive in 2020, and now has more than 3,500 old paper bags plus some plastic ones. Sumner describes these bags as “great symbols of social history, they track the tastes and flavours of our time across each decade … It’s important to celebrate these insignificant objects; they often create memories that last a lifetime.”

The M&S St Michael bag, ubiquitous on high streets throughout the 80s and 90s, is a particularly popular choice now. The label is nostalgic across generations because it was seen on items at the store from 1928 until 2000, but it is also sought by those too young to remember it.

It is now central to the store’s latest collaboration – a collection by the cult London streetwear label Aries arriving on 20 August. It includes a £90 leather tote bag styled to look remarkably like an old St Michael carrier.

Lisa Illis, the head of womenswear design at M&S, said: “Turning an everyday carrier bag into a collectable leather accessory perfectly captures what this partnership is about – celebrating the cultural relevance of St Michael while introducing it to a new audience. It takes something deeply familiar and reimagines it through a completely contemporary lens.”

Nostalgia is central across the Aries collaboration. Sofia Prantera, the designer and founder of Aries, says she drew on formative experiences. “Growing up, M&S was part of family life. [It] is a true British institution that has played a role in so many people’s lives and memories.”

Vintage St Michael clothing is sought after on secondhand sites. “St Michael occupies a unique place in British culture,” says Illis. “For many people, it represents memories of a trusted brand that was part of everyday life, while for younger consumers it has become a coveted piece of fashion history.”

Old carrier bags also contain this sense of fashion history – and they contrast against the bags that are now available for 20p at most supermarkets. “They seem much sturdier than what you get today,” says Sumner, “although any after 2000 turn to dust if you touch them as they were made to biodegrade faster.”

Of course, it is now frowned upon to use plastic bags at supermarkets, following anti-plastic campaigns in the 2000s and items such as Anya Hindmarch’s “I am not a plastic bag” tote, which saw 80,000 queue to purchase one in 2007. Single-use plastic bags were phased out at supermarkets in 2015 when a mandatory charge was put in place by the government. By 2023 sales of plastic bags in supermarkets had been reduced by 98%.

This shift is also reflected in the secondhand market. The canvas bags given away for free by brands including APC, Octobre Editions and Alo with a purchase are popular, selling for upwards of £10. This week, Vogue named the Alo bag “this summer’s trending beach bag” while the canvas bag from the American grocery store Trader Joes – bought for $4 in store – has a new life on the streets of London as something of a status symbol.

If some think old carrier bags are appreciated because design in the past was more considered, Leslie says the opposite might be true. “Part of the joy of the old stuff is that it is so basic and so thrown together rather than carefully mediated through an in-house design studio poring over different colour possibilities,” he says. “This was ‘our colour is green, that green is good enough, we’ll go with that’.”