The burning question, Sven: Why more bags?

Ever since we launched the POUF, we received numerous requests from our customers for more bag offerings. I think the audience, in general, has an appetite for day bags that possess a design quality and yet are accessible price-wise.

Tell us how the idea for the POUF bag came about.

Often when I was styling a collection, I often felt certain looks were missing a bag to look complete.

I’m not a bag designer by training, and for a long time, it never crossed my mind to design one. But I was introduced to a friend who runs a bag factory producing for brands and he encouraged me to sample a bag. So I did, although I really didn’t expect we would produce it. You can almost say it’s an accident that POUF came about.

That’s serendipitous! What was your thought process for POUF though?

Naturally, when I approached this, I was thinking of a bag that would be a perfect accompaniment to our ready-to-wear pieces. I imagined something modern yet reassuringly effortless - a bag that would go perfectly with our dressier styles and the pieces with a bolder silhouette. Those were the looks I often found incomplete - like a bag was needed.

Eventually, Kane, our artisanal director and I really got into it during sampling, I think it’s because we have been designing clothes so much that a new product just brings about a new sense of excitement and freshness. For our first POUF, we used a corrugated fabric that we had recently developed then, and subsequently made a mini version in Nappa leather.

So… we hear that there’s a limited holiday edition for POUF. Tell us about it!

Yes, this one is a personal favourite. Our holiday mini leather POUF bag pays homage to artisanal craftwork and comes adorned with a delectable charm inspired by the botanical photography of Karl Blossfeldt, a German sculptor and photographer from the early 1900s. He started taking close-ups of plants in order to teach his students. To do this, he used a method called “microphotography” to capture the shapes of the botanical plant forms while keeping the plant details in focus.

Taking a note from there, we painstakingly created this charm with fine crafting techniques, in order to translate the wondrous forms, shapes and textures of our natural world onto leather.