How and where our bags are made

Saturday, 08 May 2010 by Belen Echandia

Made in Italy

Our bags are all sampled, cut, sewn and produced entirely in beautiful Italy, by an Italian team with over 300 years' experience between them. Each season, the first step towards developing a new collection is visiting the leather and fabric fairs in France and Italy.

We source beautiful leathers in vibrant colours, materials and hardware in Italy and our handbags are produced in an Italian atelier by a team of highly skilled Italian craftspeople.

We love Italy - the tradition, the food, the people, the architecture and of course, the weather. It is not difficult to get inspired in such a beautiful country.

Cutting Leather

The skilled artisans in our atelier cut every piece of lining and leather by hand.
Here you can see the lining of one of our bags being prepared in the old-fashioned way. You can imagine that this takes a lot of skill and concentration! When each piece is cut the bag is stitched, the lining and hardware is added, we wrap it up with care and send it on its way to you.
Here you can see the hardware being added to some Love Me Minis in chocolate leather...


...and here you can see one of our tags being stamped. Our Creative Director Jackie recalls the first time she saw one of our handbags being made: "I was transfixed. Before I began designing leather goods I had never previously thought about how or where the bags I bought were made. It is truly a fascinating, laborious process when done in the old-fashioned way."

Naming bags...

For a long time we didn't name our bags, as we searched for a more original system than the women's names used by many designers. Jackie recalls "One day I was sitting in my studio reading through the wonderful email reviews we receive every week and I was inspired. I suddenly thought that since our muse is the Belen Echandia woman, we should dedicate our collections to you by naming them after customer comments". And so we did.

Some of you say you love the way our bags are soft and strokeable (Stroke Me), that you find them extremely wearable and use them for everything (Take Me Anywhere) or just that you love yours (Love Me).

The importance of Europe

In contrast with the mass-market luxury brands, it is very important to Belen Echandia that our bags are produced in Europe. European ateliers have a history of excellent workmanship and Italian leather is world-renowned for its finishing.

They are masters of a leather craft which has been passed down and perfected through generations. Most importantly, our collections are hand-produced in very small quantities. It is impossible to produce such quantities in the huge, mass-market factories of Asia and Eastern Europe.

You may be shocked to hear that most large luxury companies now mass-produce their bags in countries with little or no leather tradition, most often in China. Lower wages result in higher margins. When you buy one of these bags, you are really buying into a name and an advertising campaign. By contrast, when you buy a Belen Echandia bag, you are buying into a piece of history – safe in the knowledge that it is ethically-produced.