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Fifteen years ago, was flipping through the glossies and all she saw was leather. “It’s not that different from now – the magazines are gone, but the leather isn’t,” says the designer, who always says it like it is. Back then, the green-minded businesswoman saw a gap in the market for a vegan bag that had all the clout of say a Birkin, but none of the complex animal agricultural processes that she had read directly link to the climate crisis in the UN’s Livestock’s Long Shadow report.

“I knew then that saving the animals would also save our planet, something that was present in my mind as a new mum at the time,” she explains. “A truly iconic vegan bag could show the world that luxury does not need leather, so I began working with suppliers and artisans in Italy to craft a product as beautiful as our competitors using conventional materials.” The Falabella was born.



The slouchy holdall framed by a distinct chain rim was an instant hit owing to its capacious size and rock‘n’roll attitude. It was a before messy bags were a thing, the perfect fit-your-life-in holdall that Kate Moss could throw over the shoulder of a and at a festival, but that working mums on the run, such as Reese Witherspoon, Charlize Theron and Beyoncé, could hide a mountain of rice cake detritus inside. There were enough iterations – from mini to macro, studded to sleek, fringed to fabulously beaded – to get Rihanna, Blake Lively, Cheryl Cole, Sarah Jessica Parker, Paris Hilton.

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