Top tips for stylish business trips
As high-flying businesswomen we’re often expected to, well, fly high! We’re constantly jetting off around the world on press trips, to meet buyers or to attend fashion shows and conferences. We face the strain of long haul flights, exhaustion-coated timetables and the burden of carrying endless luggage – full to burst with clothes to fit different occasions. All of these tiring factors leave us with panda eyes and caffeine lapses… but when we reach our place of work, we can’t show anything but professionalism!
How is that possible though? We hear you cry. With Your Coffee Break and L&E London’s definitive guide to staying stylish, organized and professional than to just a few packing hacks, that’s how!
At the top of our travel-needs tick list comes the bag. We need the ultimate travel companion, a luggage case that’s going to be uber-practical without sacrificing our style credentials. From personal experience we can say that we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time wading through a Mary Poppins bag for our passport, press badge or chapstick at the check-in counter. There has to be a better way, we’ve silently screamed as our hands burrowed further in to the depths of our unorganized baggage. Well, we think there might just be.
Catering for busy career women with jobs that require them to look immaculate even after a long haul flight, L&E founder Lidia Jovanovska is aware that functionality needs to be the top of her wish list when creating her bags. ‘Inspiration’, she tells us, ‘always comes from a need at L&E’. With so many things to pack (a change of clothes, skincare products, a notepad, one hundred and one devices, and a diet coke for the plane…) we can’t be having our bag weigh just as much as it’s contents. We need to be nipping from departure lounge to plane meeting, not lugging a stubborn suitcase!
‘We go out of our way to find the best innovative materials and make sure they’re super light so the weight is in the content not the bag itself’, Lidia assures us.
Darting between different commitments is also made easier by the chic, simple styling of each L&E bag, the muted palette making them versatile enough to suit various occasions. ‘For airports and meetings you’d be looking at one of the big bags – the tote or cross body ones’, Lidia suggests. ‘They have a back strap to slide onto your suitcase – on which you’ll find the handy passport picket – and two elasticated side pockets for easy reach items’. Not only that, but the inside comes with multiple handy pouches for your laptop, documents, wet items and a little zipped pouch for all essentials and trinkets!
Yes, our travelling lifestyles demand space for everything; the act of being superwomen requires a little assistance when packing our goodies to travel. Between the Kalyss, Chris and Baglet add-on designs all our portable bits and bobs will have a proper home – there’s even a place for the trusty oyster card and attachable key reel. Being fumble free never looked so good.
That’s us sorted for travelling and meetings then, but what about that all important business schmoozing? ‘As for cocktails you’d be looking at the shoulder wallet/bags’, Lidia tells us. ‘In this case I suggest you leave the zipped pouch behind and take a shoulder bag that also attaches to your bag and moonlights as a wallet, saving on space. So when the time comes just drop your travel bag with the concierge (or in the cloak room), detach your wallet/bag and you’re ready to sip on that cocktail’… she’s clearly done this before!
Be the breeziest girl in the airport, train station or underground with L&E’s innovative bags. Keep your eyes glued for updates of their range on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
