Designer Tiffany Napper used to spend hours in her grandmother’s attic going through her handbag collection.
“I just loved imagining where she had taken them,” Napper said. “I ended up being given some from great aunts and grandmothers and having a little collection of my own.”
On March 15, Napper’s handbag and accessories company Flying Fox will hold a fall/winter collection presentation at Tivoli and Lee in New Orleans on opening day of Southern Design Week.
Napper’s early exposure and love of handbags is one reason the brand Flying Fox was created. Another is NFL games.
She said New Orleans Saints games are one of her favorite events to attend, and when the new handbag regulations came out, she was in search of the perfect, clear bag. The regulations call for bags in smaller sizes to follow new safety rules. The NFL highly recommends using a clear bag instead of a small clutch.
She said she started looking for options and couldn’t seem to find one that was of good quality that she could picture herself carrying.
With that, Napper started sketching her own clear bag ideas. She said she didn’t realize she was tapping into a vital market and hit as much early success as she did.
Flying Fox releases a clear bag collection before every football season, but at the design presentation, Napper will be presenting an all-leather fall/winter collection.
“[The clear bags] gave me kind of a launch pad for the brand,” she said. “The success of those single-handedly kind of allowed me to stretch my wings and start playing with leather … My biggest passion was always leather handbags.”
When designing the collection, Napper said she pulled her inspiration from things that spoke to her. While she designs her products in New Orleans, she draws ideas from another place — her home in Napa, California. She said she uses the leather as a base and then pulls out her sketchbook to create the solid product.
“It’s all about creating something that’s really chic,” Napper said. “Classic but still modern and something that you can carry all day long and hopefully have for a lifetime and never feel like you’ve outgrown it.”
After the sketching process, Napper sits down with the third-generation handbag maker she works with in New York City to get the finished product made.
“Based on my sketches we’ll make our first rough draft — our first version of the bag,” Napper said. “I’ll evaluate and see if I want to make changes before we move on into full production mode and make multiple versions of that bag.”
Napper gives each bag a name from a female member of her family. She said while designing, she’ll become reminded of bags her mom, sister or cousin previously owned or liked.
Flying Fox’s mini-pouches are named after Napper’s mom because she said her mom always would talk about how she wanted a little, leather pouch.
Now Napper’s mom and other consumers can acquire leather pouches and handbags with the Flying Fox name. The event will run from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and she said it will not be a typical runway show with models but instead will be a presentation layout.
While Napper has worked with Southern Design Week before, this is her first time being part of the team as a presenting designer. She said she’s excited to be showcasing her bags and presenting them as works of art because, to her, each piece is exactly that.
You can reach Meg Ryan on Twitter @The_MegRyan.
Flying Fox presents all leather handbag collection at Southern Design Week
By Meg Ryan
March 11, 2015
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