For all its many charms, Norwich tends to lag behind London on internet-buzzy trends (personally, I count that as among its charms), but it’s not always easy to pinpoint by exactly how long. So I was interested to spot, on a recent trip into the fine city, a woman carrying a Trader Joe’s-branded tote bag.

Trader Joe’s is a US supermarket; it does not operate in the UK, let alone East Anglia. And yet its merchandise – specifically this black-strapped, red-stamped but otherwise unremarkable tote bag – has been increasingly ubiquitous in London this year, as noted by the New York Times in July.

Three months to make it up to Norwich felt about right. But why, I wondered, was the arrival of the Trader Joe’s tote so inevitable in the first place? Tote bags used to generically signal eco-consciousness; now the message has become much more targeted and – naturally, given an online discourse obsessed with categorising people into types and tribes – fraught.

A tote bag is no longer just something you receive for free with a purchase over £40: it’s seen as a personal statement and even a billboard for your individual “brand”. A tote bag from Daunt Books, Shakespeare and Company, the London Review of Books, the New Yorker or Fitzcarraldo Editions may earn you points for reading, but see them detracted for obviousness. Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods impress upon the observer your easy familiarity with North American produce. And a man carrying a Mubi bag risks being marked out as a boorish “film bro” or “performative male”.

It may have started with totes from known brands selling items you at least need to carry, but the craze for merchandising has now spread to lesser-known and even local establishments – and well beyond bags.

Jolene, the north London bakery, sells not just totes but branded hats, socks, scarves and even oilskins. You can cherish the memory of a

© The Guardian