KiplingElysia Shoulder Bag

The last Kipling I replaced it with was a bag my dad bought me when I was in 4th grade... in 4TH GRADE. That was in 2003 - more than 18 years ago! Don't get me wrong! My old bag is still in excellent condition, but it had 18 years worth of stains in in from my elementary and high school days that got older in time and caused some discolorations to the external bag. It wasn't presentable to use in a professional setting, so I had to move on :(((( Anyway, that says a lot about the quality of Kipling bags, don't you think? ;-)The good: I bought the black one. It feels like its water and dirt repellant, and the round Kipling logo is made of actual rubber. The texture is superb! I love it.The black is a beautiful shade of black, very chic, classy and elegant. Goes well with any outfit, school uniform, work clothes, casual get up, you name it! It's so versatile!It IS actually lightweight and as a good balance of a firm-soft structure. It gives this authentic "premium" feel to it.It has good spacious separate compartments. Now I have a separate part for my face mask (I always keep 1 or 2 extra in my bag and I really hated having it touch other things in my bag. I wanted it kept clean and sterile), an inner small zipper for my keys and Airpods, 2 compartments side by side with magnetic snaps, and 2 more zippers in front and at the back, one for my phone and one for my wallet! Now whenever I pull out my phone, I don't need to worry about my wallet falling off because it's now stored separately but still within the bag! So convenient. You'd think all of these compartments would make the bag bulky, but no. It's so efficiently designed.... and they managed to keep the bag lightweight too!The bad: This new Kipling Elysia deisgn comes with the rubber monkey keychain instead of the fluffy one. It doesn't come with a lanyard for the key. At first I thought the product I received was a knockoff because it didn't have that. After going through the Kipling website and some research, I found out that it wasn't the case. This new design did not have the lanyard on purpose! That makes me sad because I really liked that feature :( So that's the only downside.

its smaller than i expected and i want the furry monkey