Millican Fraser The Rucksack 32L | Performance

Millican is a young, renegade Lakes-based upstart of a company doing things in their own, distinctive, sustainable and retro-styled way. Take the ‘Bionic Canvas’ fabric. It’s 57% recycled polyester and 38% cotton, plus 5% high tenacity polyester, all impregnated with paraffin wax.

It looks and feels great and is a claimed ‘30% stronger than regular canvas’. The trim is leather and the whole look harks back to vintage alpine styling, You could imagine Clint Eastwood dragging one of these up the North Face of the Eiger.

All of which is great, but dig a little bit deeper and you realise that Fraser has a thoroughly modern side to him. Take the ace-looking forged aluminium buckles of a type first seen on Lowe Alpine’s most technical climbing packs. They’re everywhere from the waist belt fastener to the slightly fiddly sternum straps and they not only look great – plastic, pah… – they work really well too.

Then there are the artful hidden pockets. One, slotted away in the back system, has a neat key-clip and space for your wallet or phone. Ideal for commuting,  but just as good for simply storing things. The side stash pockets are gusseted and expand to hold a bottle, map or anything else you want to carry and inside, the hydration pack sleeve doubles as a lap-top one holding anything up to 17″ says Millican.

For crowded tube commutes you can simply remove the padded hip-belt and take advantage of the neat, top-mounted grab loop. But if you’re walking in the hills, stick it back on and take advantage of the handy hip-belt pockets that Clint never knew he needed, but are idea for small things, snacks and compact cameras.

Speaking of which, how does it carry? Impressively well is the answer. The back-system is a basic stiffer plus foam padding affair, but it just works. The shoulder straps feel just right, there’s added support from the waist belt and it nestles nicely into your back.

Not quite as sophisticated as more modern designs, but for normal walking with medium loads we thought it worked just fine and the shoulder straps actually have a simplified take on Lowe Alpine’s body variant tolerant adaptive fit technology, but shhh, we didn’t tell you that…