Best Leather Tote Bag for Travel in 2026: Why Simplicity Wins
Moore & Giles has been working with leather since 1933 and this has to be high on the all-time list of most-asked questions. It’s a great one! Unfortunately, the honest answer is a vague-sounding “it depends,” though that’s only because leather, like everything, is nuanced, every rule comes with an exception, and every suggestion has a special case.
I've logged a lot of miles lately. Maryland. Durham, NC. Las Vegas. Boston next week. Two car trips, two flights, a handful of hotels, a friend's guest room, taxi rides, and one very crowded van. Like many of you, I am a person who travels; like all of you, I have opinions and preferences about the best way to carry my stuff.
Duffels get most of the attention in the pantheon of travel bags—not without good reason!—but the travel bag I’ve been reaching for lately has been a leather tote bag. “But don’t you need pockets?” you cry, aghast. “And what about a zipper?” I’d like to make the case that a tote is best for travel not despite its simplicity, but because of it.
Do You Need a Zipper in a Travel Bag?
When most people go looking for the best tote bags for travel, the first thing they check is closure. Does it zip? How secure is it? What if someone bumps into me on the jet bridge? What if my bag tips over in the overhead bin? These are reasonable questions, and I'm not here to dismiss them entirely. But I think the zipper has become a kind of security blanket for travelers — a checkbox that feels responsible but doesn't always reflect how we actually move through the world.
Here's what I've noticed about myself on the road: I pack beautifully on the way out. My clothes are organized and folded; the inside of my bag is a neat grid of packing cubes, my wash kit, a few travel cases and pouches for chargers and cables. Everything is in its place. In departure, I am a pro, a person of great organizational virtue. Coming home is a different story entirely. Coming home, I am a man transformed. I roll dress shirts into cylinders; I intermix shirts with underwear; my phone charger gets tucked into a shoe; I contemplate just burning my laundry. Did I arrive with so much stuff?
A zippered bag is not actually more useful to this second version of me. If anything, it's an adversary.
Moore & Giles employee, Ellie, using her Massie on a trip to Italy
An open tote, with its gaping maw and open interior is incredibly forgiving. On the way out, it holds your organized life with quiet elegance. On the way back, it holds your actual life without complaint. It opens wide, accepts what you give it, and never makes you fight with a zipper at 6am in a hotel room as your Uber is arriving and you still need to figure out their “easy” in-room check-out system.
To be fair, it is nice to have a zipper to hide your mess behind, but you know what nobody talks about when they're comparing the best leather tote bags for travel? What happens after you land.
When I get to a destination, I unpack my tote (the last vestiges of my responsible travel self), hang up my clothes and, voila, I have a genuinely beautiful bag to carry around town. That bag can come with me to a meeting, it looks good laying on its side in a park, it lets me refuse a bag at checkout—“No, no, I can just tuck it in here! But thank you!”—keeping me unencumbered and wandering to my heart's content. A duffel cannot do this! A duffel gets stashed in the hotel closet or left waiting on a chair until the end of the trip. A leather tote, by contrast, transitions from carry-on to companion without missing a beat.
That's the real case for the tote as your best carry-on travel bag. It's not just about how it performs in the airport. It’s about enhancing the reason you went on this trip in the first place.
Leather Bags I Keep Coming Back To
I've spent more than a decade designing bags, so I can tell you that when I'm actually traveling and living out of one of our bags, not just thinking about them, drawing them, or troubleshooting new designs, there are two that I reach for consistently.
The Seven Hills Massie is one of the best leather tote bags for travel. Wide, uninterrupted panels of supple leather, a clean unstructured silhouette, and a size that holds everything you need while still looking sophisticated. I won’t belabor the point but, also: there's no zipper. The material and construction (and color-blocking if you choose one of the two-tone options) make it (and you!) look like a pro at the airport, a bon vivant at a cool restaurant, and a total rake (complimentary) at the beach. Exactly the kind of versatility you want from a bag. It's an investment, but one you can take anywhere and will still be using in fifteen years.
Second, for the traveler who really does want a closure—no judgement here! It’s sensible!—the Reclaimed Zip Tote is the dark horse selection. Its front-facing zipper allows it to open as wide a its zipperless peers and gives it a sleek look that's nothing like the utilitarian travel bags it’s sharing overhead bin space with. The broken-in reclaimed leather means it looks like it has a story the first day you carry it. We also make it in a smaller size for those who travel light or just want something a little less imposing on their weekend trip.
The best tote bags for travel are the ones that don't stop being useful the moment you stop traveling. The bags I've described above—along with many, many others in our line—go from carry-on to errand bag to dinner bag without feeling out of place. That ease is worth more to me than a zipper.
What Makes a Good Leather Travel Bag
A great leather travel bag should be durable enough to last for years, flexible enough to adapt to how you actually pack, and versatile enough to move from the airport into everyday life. High-quality leather develops character over time, making it not just a travel bag, but something that becomes part of your routine.
Shop our full collection of leather tote bags — and if you want to travel like you mean it, pair yours with a wash kit or travel case that fits right inside.