Shopping

Bold and colourful: Car bag £185, Orla Kiely

Handbags as fashion accessories date back to the late nineteenth century, when women started to venture outside the home to go to work and to travel. Previously, aristocratic men and women carried small purses for money, jewels and perfume (essential for masking nasty smells) but bags were largely functional, used to carry work tools or embroidery equipment.

The modern handbag was invented by Coco Chanel in the 1920s; until then smart bags came in the form of clutches. Nearly a century on and bags such as the Hermès Birkin, retailing at a phenomenal £3,000-plus, have become iconic fashion statements that can command huge prices and bigger waiting lists. At the other extreme are the cheap, mass-produced bags, many of which fall apart at the seams and go out of style in months. Feature continues

Today, more than ever, bag-making and designing has become a respected artisanal skill. Hand-stitched bags made from scratch, using the best quality leather and fabrics are not only works of art which are built to last, they’re also more affordable than those fought over by WAGs and starlets. And you’re far less likely to see your bag on the arm of every other person on the bus.

Orla Kiely at her London HQ

The international success story
Orla Kiely

Orla Kiely’s handbags for women are distinctive for their bold, colourful geometric prints and colour. Kiely, 42, and her husband and business partner Dermott, 45, started their business in the mid-1990s. The first Orla Kiely UK shop opened on Monmouth Street in 2005. It’s now a multi-million pound business; her bags, clothing and homewares are sold in Selfridges and Liberty as well as across Europe, Japan and the US. She has developed an exclusive range of bags and accessories for Tate, and recently developed a shrink-wrapped handbag to be sold on British Airways flights. She studied printed textiles at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin and began making bags after an MA in knitted textiles at the Royal College of Art. She lives and works in Clapham with Dermott and their two sons, Robert and Hamish.

Time Out: How did you start out?
Orla: ‘It was ten years ago, the time of black, nylon Prada bags, so when we came in with print we had something completely different.’
Dermott: ‘One of Orla’s bags was on “The Clothes Show”. Suddenly we were in Selfridges, Graham & Green, Liberty, Fenwick… it just took off, we didn’t plan it. In the early days, Orla would design bags on the kitchen table at the weekend. While she was at work consulting for M&S in the week I would find the materials, factories, get the bags made and sell them. I tramped around London with suitcases of samples to see buyers. It was very much step by step.

How are your bags created?
Orla: ‘We design plain, leather bags – some with a print lining – and printed bags. The process starts with fabric or leather and every season, before we begin designing, we decide what colour they’ll be and what handles and components they’ll have. The leather comes from Italy and all the prints will have been designed by me or directed by me. We do lots of small sketches and doodles before producing life-size drawings from every angle. There’s no room for error. When we write the instructions for the factory we have to resolve everything because we can’t simply expect them to work out any problems. Once the bag comes back we fine-tune. So we might, for example, reduce the height by two centimetres, make the gusset deeper or shorten the handles.’

You’re from Dublin but made London your base. Why?
Orla: ‘We’re happy being based in London, it’s a very international city and I think the best designers are trained in the UK. Also, our kids are settled here and it’s close enough to Dublin, where we’re both from, that we can go back and forwards a bit.’
Dermott: We moved to the Clapham studio two years ago and live nearby so we walk into work, which is fantastic.’

What’s the biggest challenge?
Dermott: ‘Being organised is probably the most difficult aspect. We have always been good at getting the creative side of the business together, but I think that’s where a lot of designers fall down; they don’t have an organisation person.’

Where do you get your ideas?
Orla: ‘I find inspiration everywhere, but particularly from the ’50s and ’60s. I like things that are quite graphic, quite stylised, with good use of colour but not always really bright, that are balanced with neutrals. I also love classic Scandinavian designers, such as Alvar Aalto and, if I’m travelling, I’ll go to local markets and exhibitions. I’m aware of fashions and current trends but I do what I like.’
Dermott: ‘Orla is not just copying a trend, she is constantly pushing the boundaries. Every detail is thought through: keyholders, zips, pockets for mobile phones. We’ve never sat down and counted how many bags we’ve sold but I worked out that we sell an item every two minutes.’

Orla Kiely, 31 Monmouth St, WC2 (020 7240 4022/www.orlakiely.com) Covent Garden tube. Open Mon-Sat 10am-6.30pm, Sun 12noon-5pm.

Lee and Araldi in their Exmouth Market bag shop, Bagman and Robin

The rising stars
Bagman and Robin

Marco Araldi, 36, an Italian, and Keng Wai Lee, 41, from Malaysia, started out selling lampshades at Portobello Market on Saturdays (they still have a stall). They have been designing bags for men and women since 2003 and opened a shop at Exmouth Market last autumn, where they sell purses and clutch bags and luggage on commission. Using leather and vintage fabrics, their bags are functional and geometric.

Time Out: How did you start out?
Marco: ‘Bags came to us, really. We were selling lampshades and household accessories at Portobello Market and a friend gave us this really very ugly bag to sell. Someone bought it! We thought we could make much better bags. We haven’t trained in making bags; our skills come from other backgrounds. Lee is an artist and is very good at using his hands and I’m a mechanical engineer. Lee was given a sewing machine and we started experimenting. When we realised people liked our bags we started buying more fabrics, more leather and playing with different materials. In 2004, we quit our day jobs and started selling professionally at Portobello and Spitalfields markets. Many of our bags are A4-sized and can be folded in half, so you can turn a practical bag into something more elegant.’
Lee: ‘But we don’t do frills!’

Hand-moulded, leather and cotton bag: £95, Bagman and Robin

How are your bags created?
Marco: ‘A lot of our bags are black but with a splash of colour, like a bright green trim. Our approach begins with the material. We sketch and afterwards I use the computer and adjust the measurements by scaling up or down, then make a prototype.’
Lee: ‘Last year we bought some sewing machines from a Polish man.’
Marco: ‘They aren’t quite Industrial Revolution, but they are really old. Some are Edwardian.’
Lee: ‘The old machines are very basic, but because they’re not electrical and are mechanical they don’t break.’
Marco: ‘They go through everything.’
Lee: ‘One even went through Marco’s finger.’
Marco: ‘The needle went through the nail and came out the other side!’
Lee: ‘And the thread too!’
Marco: ‘We make bags in batches, maybe 40 or 50 a week, but the number depends on the size of the bag. We pay a lot of attention to the lining – we like people to have the wow factor, so when they open the bag they might discover a bright, flowery silk lining.’

How do you plan to develop the business?
Lee: ‘There are only two ways to go: outsource and lose a bit of your soul or stay as artisans. We are perfectionists, so to employ people… you have to guide them every inch of the way. It is easier to do it ourselves.’
Lee: ‘I read that handbags are selling for £3,000. We design practical bags that aren’t too expensive: from £33 up to £400. Not everyone wants to follow big fashion. For me, the fashion bags all look the same, quite homogenous. Even the colours.’
Marco: ‘Most people comment on how unusual our bags are. Not all designers mix fabrics and leather. It requires a lot of manual work so our way of doing things is unusual. We just follow our own inspiration.’

Where do you get your ideas?
Lee: ‘Just reading the newspaper or going for a walk you see combinations of colours, different shapes.’
Marco: ‘We use a lot of ’40s, ’50s, ’60s, ’70s fabrics we find in London, Italy, Barcelona, wherever. We mix them, so a bag might have ’40s on the outside and ’60s on the inside. We also make moulded leather manbags.’
Lee: ‘We aim to give people originality, quality and good design.’

Bagman and Robin, 47 Exmouth Market, EC1R (020 7833 8780/ www.bagmanandrobin.com) Farringdon tube then 19 or 38 bus. Open Mon-Sat 11am-6pm.

Susannah Hunter in her Bloomsbury bag shop

The independent artisan
Susannah Hunter

Susannah Hunter, 36, has been designing and making bags for 12 years. Her delicate designs, which have botanical names such as Rose, Lily and Anemone, are adorned with intricately appliquéd flowers and cost from £295 to £770. The bags are sold in her shop on Rugby Street in Bloomsbury (which also does furnishings) as well as other London stores including Harvey Nichols and The Cross.

Time Out: How did you start out?
‘The idea is to make works of art that people carry. At the moment, most designer bags are covered in hardware and weigh a ton before you fill them. Mine are about flowers. I studied fashion at Saint Martins but I was never interested in the latest shape of skirt and made bags for my final degree show. When I started making bags in 1995 my tutors would say, “Don’t worry, you’ll do clothes one day.” Now bags are how people identify themselves.

Lemoncello with white rose leather bag: £495, Susannah Hunter

How are your bags created?
‘I take lots of photographs and do lots of drawings that I transfer to templates. Sometimes I make things in quite weird colours such as lemoncello, a yellow that I knew would be popular. There are many elements to making one of our bags, which are made by hand: cutting out the pieces, the velvet lining and the flowers, laying the components out and sewing the flowers on, sewing up the bag putting the lining in. It would take someone experienced a day to make one d bag. Each season we sell about 500-600 bags, about 20 a week, but because we make them in batches we never end up with 20 bags at the end of each week. There are six of us in the workshop and we each do different things: someone cuts flowers, someone else sews the flowers on, another puts the bag pieces together.

‘My two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Violet, was a big part of taking the business to the next level. It was becoming too expensive to only do wholesale; shops multiply the wholesale price by 2.7 to sell at retail. We might sell a bag to a big store for £285 and they might sell it for £770. I wanted a shop to provide a showcase for our wholesale customers and to be a destination for our customers. Many people don’t believe our bags are entirely handmade, but they see the on-site workshop and realise they’re not being made by children in India.’

You seem to have a thing about flowers…
‘We don’t generally make bespoke bags, but if someone came in and they had a lovely, floral name like Poppy I might! I was asked to put a pool table on the corner of a bag once but I refused. I lost that order, strangely. The colourful flowers appeal to women but in the new collection we have autumn leaves which I think on a satchel could appeal to a man. A man could have black leaves or flowers on a black satchel, why not?’

What do you think of the current obsession with ‘it’ bags?
‘Though some of my customers are handbag fetishists who might have a Louis Vuitton, a Chloé, a Marc Jacobs… I think on the whole they aren’t interested in labels. Uma Thurman, Nicole Kidman and Helena Christensen carry my bags, but I am notoriously mean and don’t give them away. I have a dilemma about whether I can say someone’s got one if they didn’t actually buy one – those three bought theirs. It’s hard for me to use anyone else’s bags. I’d feel pretty silly if I was telling someone about my bags and didn’t have one. Until recently I was using a silver haversack with my flowers on, but that version isn’t sold in the store so I carry a Shopper now.

How do you plan to develop?
‘In the next ten years I would like to see the handbags go from strength to strength, have two or three stores and extend the furnishings. I would love to expand into Japan. And I would also love to put the flowers on to crockery.’

Susannah Hunter Atelier, 7 Rugby Street, WC1 (020 7692 3798/ www.susannahhunter.com) Holborn tube. Open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm, Sat 12noon-4pm.