Pepper, Ninja Sue, Sus, Asa, Penny & MrsS, thanks for your kind comments. I highly recommend both the style and color.
The Garden Party is a perfect knock-around travel bag. This is the PM, 35 cm size; it holds a ton and looks good doing it! I expected to get a gold or black one, but after seeing all 3 colors next to each other, I was surprised to pick ardoise, which was described by my SA as a bluish gray. The color is very rich and goes well with almost everything, especially jeans and black. To my eye, the bag looks right at home in the jeep and on the safari plane, but maybe I'm just biased. Of course, I did stress about dust and fumes getting on the white stitching, but everything came through just fine.