The Italian Man Purse Never Died: America Just Renamed It
The borsello, Italy’s man purse, scandalized North America for decades. Now many men own one. They just call it a sling bag instead.
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In 1998, in a popular episode of Seinfeld, a robber grabs Jerry’s small leather bag. A cop nearby asks him to describe what was stolen. He hesitates. He uses euphemisms. He squirms. Finally, he relents and loudly admits that it’s a purse. He carries a purse.
For the entire duration of the episode, his defense was that it’s not a purse. It’s a European carry-all.
Jerry was actually right. It was European. He was wearing a borsello, the Italian man bag. He was just twenty years too early to win that argument in North America.
Because, believe it or not, the man purse won. Quietly, worn slightly differently, and under an assumed name, but it won. Many North American men carry one even if they would physically fight you for calling it a purse.
The women reading this, meanwhile, solved the whole problem around the invention of the handbag and have probably been watching men reinvent it ever since.
What is a borsello?
A borsello is a small men's bag. The word comes from borsa (bag), and the masculine diminutive marks it as a men's item.
Italian has a remarkably specific vocabulary for bags. Portafoglio is a wallet. Borsellino is a coin wallet or very small bag. Marsupio is a belt bag, what North Americans call a fanny pack. The tracolla is any bag worn crossbody. The pochette is a flat clutch bag carried in hand (rare among straight men, even in Italy). A zaino is a backpack.
Size-wise, a borsello sits in between a portafoglio and a zaino. It has a strap that you wear on your shoulder or across your body.
Inside you’ll typically find a phone, keys, wallet, tissues (virtually everyone in Italy carries pocket tissues), and other small accessories.
Italian trousers are cut close, and we really care about style in Italy. So the borsello emerged as a solution to the problem of bulging pockets wrecking the line. Form leading to function. Very Italian.
Why North American men rejected the man purse
Ask an Italian man why he carries a borsello, and he’ll be puzzled by the question. Where is his stuff supposed to go?
Ask the same question to a guy in rural Alberta, and you’ve just questioned his masculinity. Fighting words.
The gap is cultural, not practical. North American culture spent decades mocking any man carrying a bag without a laptop in it.
Seinfeld is the documentary record. So is Friends, where Joey insists his man bag isn't a purse. And so is The Hangover, for that matter, where Alan insists he’s not wearing a purse. He’s wearing a satchel. Indiana Jones wears one.
In three of America’s most prominent examples of a man with a bag, the guy scrambles to explain that the thing on his shoulder isn’t what it obviously is.
Here’s what they were dancing around: the bag was never the issue. The word purse was.
An Italian man doesn’t need a cover story. Carrying your things in a bag is culturally normative for both men and women. Nobody will question your sexuality because of it.
A man in Naples with a leather tracolla reads as put-together and well-prepared, not soft. So if you’re visiting and you’re worried that a bag would make you look unmanly, stop. The locals dropped that anxiety roughly half a century ago.
I have an Aura digital frame, and as I was writing this article, a few pictures from Italy scrolled through. Most men in them, including my late father and my best friend Fabio, were wearing a borsello.
The sling bag is a man purse with a rebrand
Centuries ago, both men and women wore purses. Then men’s clothes began to have pockets, and men stopped wearing them while women continued.
The need to hold things never went away. North American men simply remedied it with bulging pockets. But the amount of stuff we need to hold has grown over time. Phones alone take a full pocket. Our keys include car key fobs. In the summer months, having sunglasses with you is handy. You get the gist.
So the moment it became socially acceptable to have a bag, many North American men flocked to it. The clever trick was rebranding the bag.
It was no longer a man purse, a murse, or a men’s bag. It was a sling: one strap, worn across the chest or back, marketed within an inch of its life. The fastest-growing men’s bag in North America.
Go to Amazon, and the bestsellers in the men’s category aren’t labelled as purses. They are “sling bags”, “tactical sling bags”, “technical sling bags”, “anti-theft crossbody bags”, and “EDC chest rigs” (EDC being everyday carry, a whole hobby around things you keep on you just in case).
The product is a small bag you wear on your body. Which is to say, a borsello! The marketing just bolted on some webbing and called it gear.
The man purse in North America started calling itself tactical (for the blue-collar crowd) or technical (for the white-collar one). Both groups, the same ones who'd have mocked Jerry, now buy theirs in coyote brown or solid black.
This isn’t me projecting. Industry numbers show a men’s luxury bag market north of $10 billion in 2025, and the broader chest-and-sling category has been growing at double digits year after year.
Google Trends shows an 80% worldwide growth in search interest for the keyword “sling bag men” over 2025. And it doubled in the United States. “crossbody bag men” grew 300% in the US over the same period.
Sling vs borsello in Italy
In Italy, the keyword “borsello” is up 10% over 2025, a modest number justified by a more mature market and the diversification introduced by sling bags. “borsa sling” grew over 5,000%, and it’s a breakout keyword in Italy.
In North America, a generation of men decided pockets weren’t enough and found a word that gave them permission. “Sling” was the magic word, one that is starting to appeal to Italians too.
The split between borsello and sling in Italy is geographic and demographic.
Younger men, especially in the north, are embracing slings or a slim tracolla, often by well-known designers (Gucci, Lacoste, etc.). Older men, especially in the south, tend to prefer the traditional borsello option. In the north, the borsello is starting to have zio (uncle) energy.
I’m 45 and an actual uncle, so I’m perfectly fine with my preference for the traditional borsello.
A good bag solves a real problem (pockets are small, cities have thieves, men carry phones now) without announcing itself as a fashion statement or a gender role argument. The bag, whether a borsello or a sling, is just a bag.
Jerry, Joey, and Alan were mocked for carrying a man bag. Two decades later, men everywhere carry a small bag to the gym, the office… even the club. What changed is the product name and the price tag.
Italians skipped all of that. They looked at a small bag that holds things and figured it was useful and stylish. So, they never felt the need to come up with a cover story.
Sometimes carrying a purse and calling it that is the most confident thing a man can do.
Appendix: my borselli
I’m not a prepper. You won’t find a basement full of canned beans, just in case. But I do like to be ready, and I'm into the everyday-carry hobby to some extent. A multitool, flashlight, pen and notebook, tissues, the medical basics… that kind of thing.
They have to live somewhere. So over the years I’ve ended up with more borselli than a man strictly needs. Alicia doesn’t feel judged for doing the same with her purses, so our addiction to bags is something of a family bonding activity.
The one I bought in Assisi (depicted above) is the truest form of borsello: Italian leather that creases and darkens with age, vertical in cut, with room for just the essentials. Pure zio energy.
The one that makes me look like a tourist is a gray Pacsafe with lockable zippers, an RFID pocket, and a slash-proof strap with embedded steel wire. It’s my travel one. The ultimate borsello for the borseggiatori (pickpockets) problem. Form following fear.
But any bag worn across your front with your hands on it offers an effective defense. Wear it on your back, and you’ve just gift-wrapped it for the borseggiatori.
The other borselli I own, in case you’re curious, are from Tumi, Piquadro, Tom Bihn, and WaterField. All four brands make remarkably good borselli, and I highly recommend them.
Finally, the bag on me most days is made of nylon. A Fjallraven Vardag 6 (in coal black). Not leather, not Italian, horizontal instead of vertical, but still a borsello.
That is a man purse. I carry a purse, officer.
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It took moving abroad, then traveling a lot, to firmly cement my comfort with a cross body bag to carry my personal items. Initially my wife “suggested” that she would no longer carry my stuff in her bag (that always helps!) Now that I’m used to it, I carry it every time I leave the apartment, and I don’t feel uncomfortable with it, how to handle it in restaurants and on airplanes and trains. And I realize just how practical and efficient it is to have, rather than pants pockets loaded with loot! Tip: I have carried a Travelon anti-theft ballistic nylon cross body bag for years, and I even had a leather copy made and I don’t like it, so I carry the original everywhere, especially when we travel.
Another great article about something Italian that I have completely overlooked. The borsello is so practical and stylish. I especially dig the types with the “zio energy” (love that description, lol). North American men looks so frumpy and sloppy carrying all their stuff in the pants pockets. I may try to gift my father one and see if he’ll at least use it when we travel in Italy. It’ll be much better than that tactical-style belt he typically uses.