Plus This summer’s It bag
What happens after you create a sell-out, cult bag? Victoria Moss meets the designers behind Mansur Gavriel to find out
If ever there was a fashion item that could be considered out of control, it’s the handbag, which over the past 20 years has risen up from something used to carry possessions around in and become a symbol with far loftier pretensions. Pretensions that demand the prefix “It” and a price tag of £1,000 – and way upwards. In a horribly crowded marketplace, few newbies cut through the chaff. One exception, however, is the NYC-based label Mansur Gavriel, which has been so successful that every new bag brand in its wake is touted as “the new Mansur Gavriel”.
The brand was launched three years ago by friends Rachel Mansur, 32, and Floriana Gavriel,33, with one simple yet striking design: a drawstring crossbody bucket bag, which they followed up with a wide, deep tote bag, both with contrasting coloured linings. The beauty was in the simplicity of design and the tantalising colourways. What makes them even better is the price – at around £500, they are comparatively affordable.
“We use the highest-quality vegetable-tanned leather and produce in Italy,” says Mansur, “but we wanted to keep it at a certain price. It’s more interesting. It’s easy to go crazy and start making this bag that costs £3,000, but we liked the challenge of making something high-quality and beautiful, not in an inexpensive way, but within reason.”
From their first season they generated the white-hot, must-have status that marks any front row-favoured item which no one can actually get hold of. Sixty thousand fans trailed lyst.com in 2015 in search of a bag. For every one that came into stock, 288 people tried to buy it.
“It was pretty surreal. We didn’t expect it,” says Mansur, who has a textiles degree from Rhode Island School of Design. She met Berlin-born Gavriel – who studied fashion design in Germany – through mutual friends at a gig in LA. And, as is the modern way, they explored design ideas and references through a Tumblr account, before both moving to New York to start work on the first collection.
The duo’s handbags are now stocked in every significant boutique and department store across the world, they won this year’s CFDA award for accessory designer of the year, and have just launched an exclusive collection of mini bags – the Mini Mini Sun, a tiny version of their new season ladylike tote bag (shrunken designs are fashion’s favourite new thing, given their cuteness and entry-level prices) in London’s Dover Street Market.
But what happens after you create a cult It Bag and have to rapidly scale up so you can meet demand? “For the first time, we’re building a design team. Up until now it’s just been us,” says Mansur. Now they have a staff of 25.
Handbags, though, were only ever supposed to be the kick-off category. “We always had this idea of building a world. We thought about many different types of product, before narrowing it down to bags. We didn’t have much money, so we thought it would be great to focus on one thing.”
This summer, they have added shoes – bright-coloured, simple-looking suede mules in flat, mid- and high-heel options – that have been slavishly copied on the high street.
“We liked the idea of the shoes relating to the bags aesthetically and having this simple form that we explored through colour and material,” says Mansur. Of the copying, she says: “You just start to ignore it. You can’t dwell on it. We’re interested in creating a brand that is not about one product. It’s about all of our products and how they relate together to create a world. In a sense it’s something you can’t really copy.”
Next up, they’re working on readyto-wear. Will that follow the same minimal tropes of the accessories? “We’ll see,” says Mansur cautiously. Watch this space.