Introducing Handbags. The Ring Tote and the Document Clutch aka the Bi – Jamie Haller

All the personal things about the bags.

The road to making handbags started over a year ago, and to be honest, I am not quite sure how and why. The big why, it’s from love, like everything. It’s from personal vintage collections, from dreaming in tanneries with skin swatches folded under arms pretending its purses, it’s nostalgia for all things from my past, gravity and inspiration.

These things just unfold.

I think that thing that the loafer did to me and to all of us, I wanted that same feeling in a big tote. I had been carrying another tote for years, just like I buy the same car over and over again (Volvo’s always, I have had three). And instead of getting a 3rd tote of the same, I started to wonder why not just make one.

I could really see it in the loafer skin. Just like the loafer basically matches everything and makes everything look better, I thought a bag could do the same. I was inspired by bags like vintage LV, vintage Gucci, vintage Coach (my favorite), vintage Dooney and Burke. Something heritage, something with soul.. something different than what I could buy.

The Ring Tote in Oxblood

The Ring Tote in Black

And I will give you the heads up.. One day I am coming to design a couch inspired by the one above. I am going to make it in the loafer skin too. I bought this couch on a whim, a hard yes in a moment when I walked into Amsterdam Modern for a different reason, and I fell in love. (Gravity!) I bought a couch I didn’t need on the spot because I could see the shape of the cushions in the loafer skin. I could see a future in it. I couldn’t part from it. It was a have to have, So.. one day.. I will do that too. Make couches. Just telling you now so you won’t think I am crazy later.

And this red couch and these red kitties make me want to have long red nails. Isn’t that crazy??

When I was 22 I moved onto my best friends couch in her studio apartment. I broke up with a boyfriend and took up residence in the old brick building across from the new hot place, Cafe Stella in Silverlake. It was back in 2002 and living with my best friend Anna was so fun, the time of our lives. The couch didn’t matter. We ate pate and drank too much and we played dress up everyday with her big rack of vintage handbags, namely bitch bag clutches.

Every day, after our jobs at Wet Seal Corporate Offices (I was a designer there and she worked as a buying assistant), we would come home (we drove home from deep in the OC to LA) and pull out the biggest bitch bag we could find and head straight to Cafe Stella across the street and sit at the bar. A bitch bag shaped my 20s. It couldn’t be long enough, the more obnoxious the better. My favorite look was my Zara cargos (which were cool then because you had to go to Paris to go to Zara - it was pre internet! ), black mules, a sheer black chiffon sheath (I wore a bra, Anna did not) and a long patent leather bitch bag. I still have the patent one. And there is nothing I wanted more than to carry a bitch bag now.

The longer the better.

Why did we call it that? We were 22. We thought it was a perfect name. 80’s inspired, very “I’m right on top of that Rose”- from Don’t tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, very Melanie Griffith Working Girl. Very me at 22. And very me now still. AKA The Document Clutch, which is also good name, because when unfolded, it’s perfect for all of your faxes, it’s perfect for all of your big papers you must carry around.

That’s the funny thing, that was real. That need then.

When this was all happening, in 2002, we faxed all of our design’s to China. I would stand by the fax machine, in a line behind the other designers, holding my to-be-faxed documents and punch in the long phone number and wait for those 14 pages to send with that long winding chime.

You had to make sure that that fax was sent at the end of every day. It was imperative! All of this. This world. These are my clutch influences. For me, the design of my namesake collection is personal, the inspirations, they come from me, my thoughts, my stories, my nostalgias, my desires. It might not makes sense to share these stories, but as a design direction, it makes more sense than anything I’ve made in some ways. I love the “Bitch Bag” Document Clutch, I love it so so much. So you can hold your papers, or you can fold it and carry it under your arm in a bitchy way. Whatever suits you.

How perfectly bitchy is this.

The last time I as in NYC, I had the document clutch, the single sample that existed. I covet it. I carried it around the city, because I made it and felt so connected to it. It so fun to feel that excitement, to show off the thing you made. I love that feeling. Pride! Do you know 5 people stopped me in the street to say, Where did you get that bag? That’s when I knew it was going to be a thing, my bitch bag. I felt really proud. Really good.

The sales staff at Khaite stopped me to say it, where is that bag from. And at Toteme, same, the guy chatted me up about my bag. And at Tibi, and at What comes around goes around. These are my favorite shops to shop you can see. And just walking down the streets of Soho, people walked straight to me to ask about my bag, from across the street people stopped to ask. I felt bag famous. Last September in NYC with my bitch bag... I just walked around soaking it up. Heaven.

To think of it, this happened in LA too! I was sitting at a wine bar in Echo Park, and a woman I knew walked from across the room, to say hi, because she knew me from a friend and met me at the sample sale, and she was like.... That bag! Where is it from??

Already she’s giving me such good moments and she was just born. When I had my daughter, I remember one of my earliest thoughts was, I get to have her my whole life, the most joyful thing I could imagine. It’s like that. Kinda:) but with a bag.

And “bitch bag”, that can be our insider name… I didn’t want to call it bitch bag on paper, in real life here, I didn’t want to offend anyone (please don’t be offended, I am trying to just keep it really authentic to me. I also didn’t want to get blacklisted by Meta, true… They might ban me, they do that.

Below, me feeling myself with my clutch, at you know where.

Oh and there is the inside... We can’t not talk about it. This lining I saw one day, hanging on a rack in Phil Fox’s fabric showroom in DTLA. I grabbed it thinking... if I ever make bags, I’m going to make that my lining. Well, it sat around my office for a long while until all of a sudden I knew exactly what to do. It’s a fall in love moment for me too. Sometimes I grab these things I fall in love with and just hold on and wait, because I know it’s going to do something.. even if I can’t yet see what. The couch. The lining. An earring I found on the ground that inspired me to make the jewelry. A ring I found at a shop in Paris when I realized I was looking for chunky pinky rings. They are clues of the future.

When I do interior design, I would always talk to my clients about following the thing you love. Pick that one thing that every time you walk in the room, you will clock on entry, you will see it and it will resonate that you love it, it will love you back. That little exchange, that daily dose of personal joy and satisfaction, that’s for you. Even if you are in a rush, you will still know from the side eye, you love each other. Picking that kooky wallpaper, the one that is a little wilder than the safe one.. pick the one that you LOVE in your hand, not the one you should like well enough. That is the thing that will bring you the joy. Same here. This is the thing. The Gravity. The Love. The Medicine. The Lining, The Bufalini. Stops me in my tracks.

I want to hear the client open the bag, and gasp. You will. You can’t even really imagine it yet, how beautiful they are inside. When I was on set with a photographer Jenna Peffley, and I gave her the suede loafers as a gesture, she was shooting that Pasadena House (the MCM one from AD). She put them on, and she went OOOOOOH because that is what they make you feel. It was un unplanned audible moment of joy. A sound you can’t help but make. Thrilled and surprised and in love.. that’s the same with the lining in the bag. By design.