A letter from a reader
I’m 59. I have no business getting emotional about a handbag.
But last Thursday I sat at my kitchen table and cried opening a parcel from two sisters who are closing their leather workshop, and I think someone needs to tell you why before they close the doors for good.
Their names are Hattie and Rose. They are sisters, both in their sixties, and they learned leather in their father’s saddle workshop. They have worked at the same bench since 2004.
Twenty-two years. Two pairs of hands. One bench.
And they are winding down. No relaunch. No “new collection next spring.” When the last bag is sold, that is the end of it.
I almost scrolled past
I almost scrolled past the post that led me to them. I’m glad I didn’t.
The woman who had written it, Barbara, in a Facebook group I follow, hadn’t written like someone selling something. She wrote about the weight of the bag in her hand. About the stitching on the straps, which she said you could trace with your thumb. About how it sat up on the passenger seat of her car instead of folding over at the first turn.
That last part stuck with me, because every bag I own folds over at the first turn.
Forty years of handbags
I am 59. I have been buying handbags for forty years.
I’ve had the expensive ones. My husband bought me a Coach bag for our thirtieth anniversary, and I still carry it on Sundays. I’ve had the cheap ones from the mall that lasted one winter before the strap gave up.
What I have not had, in a very long time, is a bag that felt like someone actually made it. With their hands. For a person, not for “the market.”
What I couldn’t unsee
So on a Friday evening, with a glass of wine and absolutely no intention of spending money, I went and read their website properly.
There’s a part of it that puts their bags side by side with the machine-made kind. Saddle stitching you can trace with a thumb. Straps stitched right through, not glued on. Leather that deepens in color year after year.
I am not an expert. I just buy bags. But once I had seen it, I could not unsee it. I went and turned over every purse in my closet, and nearly every one I’d owned for twenty years was glued where it should have been stitched.
That was the moment I stopped thinking of this as a sale and started thinking of it as a last chance.
See what’s left — 80% offThey mean it
Here’s the part that didn’t land until I’d already ordered: when they say they’re closing, they mean it. I had to read this twice.
“There’s no autumn range coming. Nothing that goes out of here gets restocked. When the shelves in the workshop are empty, the shop goes quiet.”Hattie & Rose, on their website
And underneath it, the line that got me:
“The bench stays — we’ll keep stitching for our daughters … for ourselves. Just not for a shop.”
That is the only reason any of this exists at the price it does. Everything left in their workroom is 80% off. The bag I chose was $374.95. I paid $74.95, and the shipping was free.
Why I cried
It came on a Thursday. I opened it at the kitchen table.
There was nothing special about the box. Brown paper, no ribbon. But I lifted the bag out and turned it over and ran my thumb along the straps, where they are stitched right through, and I thought about two women at one bench for twenty-two years. And about the fact that soon there won’t be any more of these.
I sat there with it in my lap like a fool. I am 59. I have no business getting emotional about a handbag.
It’s the Camille, a brown shoulder bag with a clean, simple shape and no logo shouting at anybody. The leather is soft but it holds its shape, so it sits up on the car seat, just like Barbara said. My phone, wallet, keys, reading glasses and a paperback all go in without it looking stuffed.
Since then
It lives on the chair by the front door now.
My sister-in-law, who compliments nothing, asked me where I got it. So did the lady at the pharmacy counter, and my hairdresser, who asked if she could hold it.
The Coach bag is still for Sundays. The Camille is for every other day.
Then I ordered a second one, in black, for my daughter.
This is your window
If you’ve been waiting for a bag made by real hands, at a real bench, by two women whose names you know, this is your window. It will not stay open long.
Once the shelves are empty, the shop goes quiet, and there is no second chance on this one.
I almost scrolled past. I’m glad I didn’t.
Carol
Camille – Shoulder Bag
Handmade by Hattie & Rose · 22 years at the bench
$374.95$74.9580% OFF
- Leather that softens and deepens in color the longer you carry it
- Straps stitched through, not glued on
- Holds its shape, empty or full
- Brown, black or grey · about 12 × 10 × 4 in
- Free tracked shipping · 30-day money back · free $20 gift card with every order
Hattie & Rose are closing when the last bag is sold.
There are around seventy designs left.
Carol Hayes is 59 and lives in Columbus, Ohio. She has been buying handbags for forty years and is not a fashion writer.
Advertisement. This story is a dramatization; names and photos are illustrative.
Hattie & Rose · Handmade leather · Free tracked shipping