Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Meet the Bag Ladies

When it comes to must-have accessories, nothing quite tops the female fantasy list like a handbag. So obsessed are we with each season's essential piece of arm candy, we no longer flinch at the idea of paying a month's earnings for the latest It-bag.

But the price of instantly recognisable designer bags keeps on rising. Just a few years ago, it was all about the £595 Mulberry Roxanne - as carried by Scarlett Johansson and Julia Roberts. Now the standard Fendi Spy or McQueen Novak doesn't leave much change from £2,000.

Yet isn't it cooler to have something more unusual? While we continue to justify our whims with the bank manager, there are those who have been smart enough to make a business out of their obsessions. Karen Clarkson speaks to five women who have turned bags into business:

Pontine Paus, 33, lives and works from her Notting Hill townhouse. Her bags are popular with Kylie and Queen Silvia of Sweden. Pontine says:

When I embarked upon my master's degree in industrial design at Domus Academy in Milan, I never imagined that I would end up as a handbag designer - I thought I'd go into furniture or architecture. However, as part of this course I experimented with materials and chemicals. I covered some silk in plastic and decided to make a handbag out of it.

One day in Milan a woman, who owned a boutique, asked me where my bag was from. When I told her I had made it myself she asked me immediately to make a collection for her to sell.

My bags took off. I sold them through shops in Italy and created a range for the designer Louisa Beccaria. My father encouraged me to learn some business skills, so I stopped making the bags while I took a business course.

In 2002 I started making bags again. They became popular straightaway. Now we're stocked all over the world - Scandinavia, Italy, France, the Middle East and Japan.

Not everyone wants to make a major fashion statement with their clothes - most women feel more comfortable experimenting with accessories instead.

The beauty of handbags is that they can suit you whatever your age, figure or looks. They're also not as intrusive as clothing, as you can put them down when you want. I grew up surrounded by bags as my mother loves them and has a huge collection of Hermes ones. Now she only wears mine!

I own about 70 bags. I used to have a lot of vintage ones but I moved house recently and had to get rid of loads as I didn't have enough space. Now I only wear my own - if I need one for an occasion I just design it. I carry one bag for maybe six months and wear it to death before moving on.

I love big bags for the day. But for evenings I vary them depending on my outfit - my favourite is a clutch bag called The Night Owl. Every season I'm inspired by something different. I want to make beautifully-crafted bags with character. My Hunter bags for next season are all about war and hope - symbolised by star and camouflage prints. My Bandit bags were inspired by cowboys. I like having a story behind each one - that's where my art background comes in. www.pontinepaus.com

Swedish-born Charlott Vasberg, 31, lives in Chelsea. She says:

I studied womenswear design at London College of Fashion, followed by an MA in womenswear at St Martins. I graduated in 2003.

I didn't want to work for someone else, and making bags enabled me to be creative with patterncutting which is quite stimulating for me. My first collection consisted of five bags. They were soft leather bags with lots of zips. I called them 'transformation bags' - by opening and closing zips you could change their shape and look. In 2004, I sent some pictures to a few shops and got a call immediately from Selfridges. They placed an order on my first collection.

I own at least 40 bags. For day I like big bags which I can throw everything into. I have a large Twist Bag which I've been carrying almost every day for two years. For evening I like small totes and clutches. At home, my bags are hanging on the sides of my wardrobes. I also have a huge basket full of them. Most of these I've made myself, but if I was to wear one by another designer it would probably be Fendi. www.charlottvasberg.com

Susannah Hunter, 35, lives in Kilburn, London, and has been designing bags for five years. Elle Macpherson, Nicole Kidman and Uma Thurman are fans. She says:

I studied fashion design at St Martins, graduating in 1993. While working in retail at Margaret Howell, I began making handbags in my spare time for myself and for friends. The first one was olivegreen leather with irises appliquÈd all over. I carried it everywhere.

One evening at a party I met a model called Angela Dunn. She loved my bags and promoted my work within the fashion industry. She was best friends with Patsy Kensit who immediately bought four bags from me. Soon I had an order from the fashionable Holland Park boutique The Cross.

Now we're stocked in Harvey Nichols, The West Village, Paul & Joe, and Barneys and Saks in America. We're also about to open our first shop in London. Initially, I made the bags in my bedroom. Now I have a workshop with a full-time team of six people.

With the appliqued flowers, my bags look distinctive, but I change the colours and shapes each season.

Growing up in Scotland where my mother is a painter, I was always surrounded by colour and images of nature. I take pictures of flowers whenever I travel and this is the inspiration for my bags. My drawings get turned into leather flowers, which are layered onto the bag.

Everything is made by hand - it takes about a day to make each bag. I find it amazing how much women are willing to spend on bags. Mine retail between £295 and £770. Designer bags in big department stores are even more. I only own about 15 bags. Most of them are my own, apart from a few vintage bags and one from Issey Miyake. My favourite is still the first one I ever made, which I still carry to this day. www.susannahhunter.com

Canadian-born Victoria Sleeper, 35, lives and works in London and Paris. She is a bag consultant to fashion houses from YSL, Chanel and LVMH, and sells her vintage bags in Liberty, Urban Outfitters and Portobello market. Vicky says:

Growing up in Mid-West Canada, I learned how to do needlework, metal work and woodwork because if you wanted something personal you had to make it yourself.

I never studied fashion - everything I know about bags I've taught myself. I'm not very interested in fashion, but bags encompass so much - they hold our money, our lipstick and all the things that are important to us, while being tactile, sculptural and interesting to look at. I'm constantly researching things about bags.

I probably have a collection of about 20,000 bags, dating from 1600 to 1980. They come from all over the world. One of my favourites is a gentleman's hobo bag from the 1920s and I love my pre-1970s Hermes bags, the stitching is amazing. I'm also a big fan of beaded bags, probably because of my Canadian roots.

I love to change the bags I carry around with me. Sometimes I'll carry five bags in one day - I hate the thought of them being locked up in a cupboard, they need to live!

I sell a lot of bags to fashion designers but in Portobello I have all sorts of customers. Teri Hatcher bought some recently when she was in London; this morning I sold one to Helen Mirren; and I even sold a bag to the Queen.

The bags I make appeal to men and women. They're lightweight, multi-functional and in primal colours. I've just finished creating my first collection of Vicky Sleeper bags. My daughter describes them as avant-garde; my friends say they are art; and someone else has called them 21st-century urban camouflage. www.vickysleeper.com

Tabitha Somerset-Webb, 31, lives and works in Battersea, London. Customers include Cat Deeley, Denise Van Outen and Dannii Minogue. Tabitha says:

I'm probably the least likely handbag designer you can imagine. I never studied fashion or art, and I can't draw. Bags weren't even something I particularly liked. The problem was I could never find the right one for me, so in the end I thought I should just design one.

After working hard as a producer in advertising and TV, I wanted to get out and start my own business. I came up with an idea to make one bag, and ended up going around the East End begging manufacturers to make up my designs. One agreed to make some samples.

The scenario was haphazard. I took a stand at the Top Drawer trade fair in Olympia to try to start selling my bags to retailers. After three days no one had placed an order, and I was about to give up when House of Fraser placed an order for £20,000 worth of bags.

Our first orders arrived late and half the bags fell apart. But despite the hiccups, the orders grew, so I went to China to find a decent factory to make the bags. We've become well-known for our modernlooking metallic leather bags, and we're now stocked in Fenwick, Harrods, Graham & Green and The Conran Shop, and Macy's and Bloomingdale's in the U.S. We're just about to open our first shop on the King's Road. My own collection is around 40 - they are stored under my bed. I have a few vintage ones, but they are mostly my own creations. www.tabitha.uk.com

Source: dailymail.co.uk

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