About Belen Echandia

Wednesday, 29 August 2012 by Belen Echandia Belen Echandia is a London-based handbag and accessories brand loved by girls and women all over the world. We are renowned as much for our highly personal service as our beautifully designed, limited edition handbags, purses and leather wallets.

All Belen Echandia luxury handbags and leather goods are handcrafted in a family-run Italian atelier, which has produced bags & purses for many of the top European luxury brands. Our Italian handbag craftsmen use traditional techniques, used to make handbags for hundreds of years. Belen Echandia bags are designed to be functional as well as stylish, featuring extra details like multi-way leather straps, key holders, removable compartments and hidden pockets to help you stay organized. Some of our bags also feature laptop compartments and they can be ordered as an extra with all custom bags.

Belen Echandia is the only luxury Italian-made handbag company to offer an online customisation service on its entire handbag collection. Our custom bag service gives you the freedom to select from our handbag designs and order a customized bag with your choice of Italian leather, lining and hardware. You make your selections, we will customize a bag to fit perfectly into your lifestyle. BE's dedicated team will really get to know you in order to offer an individual customer experience.

Autumn 2012 sees the launch of a new era for BE, our first B.E. by Belen Echandia diffusion line collection hit the website shelves and the Hobo and satchel particularly have been hugely popular.

We hope you like our new bags & look forward to your feedback.

A Personal message from the Founder

Back in 2003 when we started out with BE, there were very few handbag brands to choose from. Many of the brands we know & love today either did not exist or did not produce handbags yet. I was living in Madrid at the time & I happened to discover a few lovely little handbag stores full of colourful bags & accessories & took to peering through the windows on my way to work like a little girl in front of a sweetshop. Being a busy modern woman, I know what a busy modern woman needs from a handbag, but just as importantly, from the company that designs & sells them. I dreamed of starting my own company.

Back in England, I continued to dream of starting my own company until 2005, when I was almost finished training as a lawyer & I decided to actually do it.

Our design concept was clear from the start - our bags must be capable of working as hard as I – & all the women I know – do. That's why we introduced multi-strap options & a variety of different interior pockets. They must be stylish, but also intelligent - & luxurious inside & out. Our customer service approach was also imperative to our success - friendly, intelligent staff offering personal style advice 7 days a week. Finally, I wanted to be able to offer a personalised, bespoke, custom service so that women could order their bags exactly as they wanted them.

Belen Echandia is driven by our love of all things beautiful, authentic & original. We respect dedication, tradition and innovation. That’s why we choose specialist craftsmen to produce all our products. With this blog, our magazine and style pages and all that is Belen Echandia we aim to inspire, to delight and to spread a little happiness. You can read more about us on the Belen Echandia website.

The BE team is proud to have turned our dreams into a reality in 7 short years. Thank you so much for your loyal patronage and support, & for helping to make Belen Echandia a success. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Jackie Cawthra
Founder
Belen Echandia