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I think Billingham was started by one of Brady's cutters who saw a market for specialist camera bags; can't speak to the 'wankstain' bit?
Thrustvector-
I found that the Billingham-bag-wearing crowd was the same elitist asshole group that frowned upon anyone who didn’t have the correct super rare lens hood for the latest generation of most expensive lens on the newest rarest model of Leica M.
I’m overgeneralising of course. One of my dearest oldboy friends carries his cameras in a Billingham, but he clearly owned it from before they were cool.
Whenever (pre-hipster) I saw a Billingham on the street it was clearly a Leica snob, and more often than not they proved the assumption when talking to.
One of the nicer of these guys was actually targeted, attacked, and mugged for his M’s that were in the bag. The thieves spotted it a mile off (literally).
pdlouche
Billingham wankstain bags