In their first venture into the luxury sector, handbag company Furla has collaborated with Saks Fifth Avenue on a collection of high end handbags comprising exotic and textured leathers. The majority of Furla’s contemporary-priced main line hovers around $500, but the 84 year old company has decided to up the ante with a line that will retail from $1,200 to $1,900.
“This project really positions the brand in the design arena, somewhere we’ve never been,” Furla’s chief executive officer Tommaso Bruso said. “The reality is that there’s an affordable luxury problem. In the market, she [our customer] goes to work every day and she needs a designer bag — but one that can be used every day.” Bruso went on to say that the brand’s long relationship with the department store came into play when devising the partnership. Saks conceived what it believed the customer would want in terms of shapes and hardware, and Bruso was able to take this information and translate it to the brand’s design team in Italy.
The styles range in size from small to large, and each bag comes with an additional strap so the wearer has the option of converting the bag into a cross-body style. In addition to two python options — one is gray-based and the other brown-based — the textured and smooth full-grain leather satchels come in black, white, brown, metallic bronze, orange, red and blue. Available Nov. 1, the six-piece satchel collection will be exclusively at 20 Saks Fifth Avenue locations and saksfifthavenue.com.
-Alia Rajput
