I am 58 and the first thing I have ever written a letter about is a make-up bag shaped like a little camper van.

Six things the Sunrover make-up bag gets right that make-up bags always get wrong, from a woman who does not review make-up bags.

Helen Davies · Customer · Chester · 5 min read

Let me be plain about who is talking. I am Helen, I am 58, I live in Chester with my husband David, and in forty years of handbags I have never once had a single thought about a make-up bag worth writing down. Make-up bags were the black zip pouches at the bottom of the handbag, invisible until you needed them and invisible while you were looking for them too. So this is not a review. It is a woman who thought a make-up bag could not possibly matter, saying she was wrong.

The bag I am writing about is called the Sunrover, from Lyra London, a boutique that has been quietly making ordinary things a bit lovelier for a while now. It is a quilted make-up bag shaped like a little retro camper van. Bright, with stitched windows along the top, a big golden sun and little flowers on the side, wheels and headlamps and all of it, with a sturdy zip running the length of the roof. It comes from a whole collection of these little vans, in florals and sunflowers and daisies and mountains and rainbows, and in three sizes.

I first saw one at the Thursday book club at the local garden centre café. The woman at the next table opened her handbag for her reading glasses, and out came this little orange van. Glasses, lipstick, mints, half her handbag by the look of it, all standing neatly on the table next to her tea. I spent the whole of the next twenty minutes looking at it instead of my book, and before we left, I asked her about it, plainly. When Lyra London later asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.

Here is what forty years of make-up bags taught me. They come in two piles. The boring pile: black and beige zip pouches that vanish into your handbag and slump into a heap the moment you fill them. And the silly pile: novelty things bought for a laugh that hold three cotton buds, stain easily, and break at the zip by spring. I had done my years in the boring pile, and I had settled, the way you settle for anything you have stopped noticing.

A make-up bag that works but bores you to tears, or one that charms you and holds nothing. Those were the options, and I had stopped arguing with them.

The Sunrover is the first one I have owned that is neither, and having carried mine every day since it arrived, I can tell you it comes down to six things.

1It makes you smile every time you open your bag

Start with the reason everyone asks about it, because everyone does ask. It is a proper little camper van, done properly. The quilted stitching goes round every window, the sun has its rays picked out, there is a peace sign on the front and daisies scattered down the side, and the wheels sit on the bottom edge as if it might drive off the dressing table. It should be silly. Somehow it is not. It is the sort of small, deliberate cheerfulness that catches you at the till, on a weekend trip, at the café, on an ordinary grey Tuesday. The woman who showed me hers said everyone asks. She was right. They do.

2It holds more than it has any right to

The shape is the clever part. It is boxy, like the van it is pretending to be, so it stands up on its own and everything inside stands up with it. Lipsticks upright, glasses flat along the top, the little odds and ends down the side where the wheels are. My old pouches held plenty in theory and delivered a jumbled heap in practice. This one keeps its shape whether it is half full or packed, and things come out of it in the same state they went in. On the dressing table it simply sits there, tidy, looking pleased with itself.

3The zip runs the whole length of the roof

Small thing, until you have lived with the other kind. The zip goes along the full length of the roof, so the bag opens wide like a proper case rather than through a mean little slot. You can see everything at once, get your hand in without knocking half of it over, and when it is zipped, it is properly shut. Nothing worms its way out into the bottom of the handbag. In forty years I have fished more lipsticks out of handbag linings than I care to count, and since this van arrived I have fished out none.

4It travels properly

David and I take regular weekend trips, and the Sunrover has already done a trip to the coast. It packed flat into the suitcase without complaint, sat on the little hotel shelf all weekend looking thoroughly at home, and came back with everything still in its place. The boutique sells it as travel-friendly and for once the label is honest. It is the right sort of shape for packing, it does not mind being wedged, and there is something quietly funny about a little camper van coming on holiday.

5There are three sizes, and each one has a job

It comes in a small, about fifteen centimetres, which is the handbag one. A medium, about twenty centimetres, which lives on the dressing table. And a large, about twenty-five centimetres, which is roomy enough that it has taken over as the washbag entirely. For years I forced one sagging pouch to do every one of those jobs and it did none of them well. Buy the size for the job you actually have, is what I would say now. Or do what I did, start with one and discover the others follow.

6There is a whole fleet of them

Mine is the sunshine one, orange with the sun and the daisies, and I would argue it is the pick of the fleet. But there is a whole collection of these little vans—florals, sunflowers, daisies, mountains, rainbows, even a Christmas one—all the same little van in a different mood. Which makes it the easiest present I have found in years, because there is a print for every woman you know and none of them will already have it. The sunflower one is on its way to my sister June as I write this, because I know better than to let her see mine first.

The Sunrover, against the make-up bags you have been buying

You can pick up a zip pouch for a few pounds anywhere, and I have spent forty years doing exactly that. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

The Sunrover is £24.95 for the small, £29.95 for the medium and £34.95 for the large, all down from £50.00.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that this is the Autumn Sale run, and once a print sells through, that is that. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that half-price is usually where I start asking what is wrong with a thing, and after a month of daily carrying, a weekend away, and one very thorough inspection at the café table, I have not found it.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them across the collection, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If your own make-up bag is a black pouch you have not properly looked at in years, this is the little van I would stand on your kitchen table myself, while your print is still there. Stop dithering and go and look at the fleet.

Helen