The first paper bag had a V-bottom. Ah mass production of packaging! How far we've come.
Imagine how special that little V-bottomed paper bag must have been to people who had no other choice but to wrap goods in paper and tie it with string.
Perhaps the most adorable thing about honest little paper bags today is the fact that you can put anything in a plain little bag and almost anything it contains will be more valuable than the bag.
Packaging costs so much more than the contents of most things we buy today - the price is so inflated by all the advertising, marketing, packaging, branding and differentiation.
Appearances are always important - even back in 1852 - but the difference between reality and the "appearances" today is quite sinister.
The parade of human imperfections turns into a horror show if you sit on a bus comparing it to the flashing images of pert young things pouting on the backs, sides of buses, in bus shelters, billboards, free newspapers, shop windows ... All the real people running to work are all odd shapes, wearing daggy, unco-ordinated fashions, too tall, too dumpy, too broad, too bumpy (including moi, I'm afraid to say.)
Yes, it's shallow. But we all do it, without thinking mostly, don't we?
The most grotesque thing about it is that we believe that the appearance of substance seems to be a higher calling than achieving substance.
"It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit" - Noel Coward, Blithe Spirit. (1941).