Are you a cloth bag snob?

According to GQ's associate editor, Charlie Porter, cloth bags announce your place in the ecocaste system Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Bottom of the pile is an environmental statement on a cloth bag; a tautology since you're already claiming green leanings by opting for cloth Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

A good example of bag snobbery is the Sonic Youth bag, which was presented to each member of the audience at Marc Jacobs' fashion show in New York, while the band played in the background Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Two years ago, Mark Jacobs produced this Al Gore cloth bag with the striking caption highlighting his reinvention as an environmental campaigner Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

The Brahmin of bags, according to Porter, is the fashion cloth bag, which is carried simply because it looks good Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

One of Porter's first cloth bags was the New Yorker bag, bearing the magazine's familiar font Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Designer Cassette Playa celebrated her involvement in a catwalk event called MAN at London fashion week by producing this bag Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

New clothing store Good Hood's cartoonish design is high in the fashion pecking order Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Bookstore cloth-bag snobbery is particularly intense, as it makes the double announcement that you are green and shop at independent bookstores Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian

Porter's current day-to-day cloth bag is from Savile Row tailors Norton & Sons, a remake of what was called a trotters bag and the height of cloth-bag snobbery Photograph: Frank Baron/Guardian